UK Government invests £4.5 million in GARDP to counter antibiotic resistance

• Health Secretary expected to promote the UK’s leading role in bolstering global health security and tackling antimicrobial resistance at the Indian Global Forum on Thursday
• People around the world set to benefit from extra UK investment to develop innovative treatments for drug-resistant infections which cost millions of lives every year
• £4.5 million funding package for research and development group takes total UK investment to nearly £19 million

New treatments to tackle drug-resistant infections that pose the greatest threat to global health are to be developed following a multi-million-pound investment by the UK government.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – where serious infections have evolved so much that antibiotics and other current treatments are no longer effective – is a silent killer costing millions of lives across the world a year, with one in five of these deaths in children under the age of five.

The £4.5 million investment made by the government’s Global AMR Innovation Fund (GAMRIF) will support the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) to develop new treatments for drug-resistant infections identified by the World Health Organization as the greatest threat to global health and development.