Civil Society Workshop sets up new coalition on antibiotic resistance

A new global coalition has been established by several NGOs to address the crisis of antibiotic resistance.

This decision was made at the end of a workshop on antibiotic resistance that was held in Geneva on 28 April to 1 May.

The South Centre hosted the workshop, and co-organised it with ReAct (a Sweden-based NGO specialising in antibiotic resistance) and the What Next Forum.

The Antibiotic Resistance Coalition (ARC) comprises civil society organisations from six continents and will act to demand policy shifts and actions.  It called on policy makers to “Act Now or face a catastrophic post-antibiotic era.”

The coalition also issued a Declaration on Antibiotic Resistance which outlined comprehensively its analysis of the crisis as well as the measures needed to address it.

“Antibiotic resistance is the most pressing public health issue facing the global community,” said Otto Cars, founder of ReAct.  “If the WHO and its members states do not act quickly, there will be disastrous global health consequences.”

According to an ARC statement,  “researchers estimate that each year millions of people around the world are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and hundreds of thousands of them die.  Without immediate action, that toll is expected to worsen.”

The ARC asserted that consumer protection and public health must trump the pursuit of profit, and that effective antibiotics are global public goods. The Coalition also calls for international leadership and action to, in part:

• Prohibit the promotion and advertising of antibiotics;
• Promote new, needs-driven and open research and development models based on the principle of de-linkage (divorcing price from research and development costs and sales volumes);
• Phase out the use of antimicrobials for routine disease prevention in livestock, and end their use, altogether, for growth promotion;
• Build robust systems, in all countries, to monitor and report antibiotic use and resistance trends in humans and animals; and
• Improve public awareness to support an ecological understanding of human-bacteria interaction and behaviour change around antibiotic use.

“Member States must deliver a strong mandate to the WHO to not only develop a pressing action plan on antimicrobial resistance, but also to ensure that public health is prioritised over commercial interests,” said Yoke Ling-Chee, program director with Third World Network. “Access to affordable and effective antibiotics is of particular importance for developing countries.”

The workshop which was held over four days was attended by civil society groups which mainly focus on health issues.  They represented national and international groups based in India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Ghana,  Tanzania, Egypt, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands and others.

The themes of the workshop included:

• State of Play of the resistance crisis: What does it look like, where is it heading?
• State of Play: Current actions by the UN, governments, experts and civil society
• Access (to medicines) but not excess (excessive use of antibiotics): Tackling excessive and irrational use of antibiotics in the health sector while ensuring equitable access
• Non-human use of antibiotics: Tackling excessive use in agriculture and food production
• Innovation: Collaborative approaches to ensure innovation of novel antibiotics
• Re-imagining resistance: Holistic and ecological approaches to tackle ABR
• Dialogue with officials from WHO

In the dialogue session with WHO, the workshop discussed presentations of the steps towards a global action plan on antimicrobial resistance by WHO Assistant Director General, Dr Keiji Fukuda, as well as Charles Penn, Carmem Pessoa Da Silva and Gilles Forte.

The participants urged the WHO to take the lead on this issue, while the WHO officials stressed that fighting  the crisis required the efforts of all sectors, including the CSOs.