DRIVE-AB partner Prof Otto Cars, Uppsala University, has been formally nominated by the United Nations (UN) Secretary General to serve as an expert to the UN ad-hoc Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (ICG-AMR). The group is currently being established in response to the UN Declaration to combat AMR that was made in September 2016 to provide practical guidance on action to address the issue of AMR globally and to supervise the implementation of the commitments and tasks that were mandated in the Declaration. Click here to read more on this story. Read moreComments are closed

The World Health Organization (WHO), with some assistance from DRIVE-AB, among others, has recently published their first ever Priority Pathogen List: a catalogue of 12 antibiotic-resistant families of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to human health. The catalogue was developed to guide and promote research and development of new antibiotics as part of the WHO's efforts to address the global threat of antibiotic resistance. Epidemiological data derived from the work of DRIVE-AB Work Package 1B, "Setting, communicating and revising public health priorities",  was used as basis for evidence-based criteria for the List. To read more from...

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has published a follow-up report for the German Global Union for Antibiotics Research and Development (GUARD) Initiative, “Breaking through the wall: A call for concerted action on antibiotics research and development” in February 2017. It provides detail on four key levers as possible actionable policy instruments; target product profiles, a global research fund, a global development fund and a global launch reward. Click here to read the full report.     ...

In mid-December 2016 the World Health Organization (WHO) established an Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Surveillance and Quality Assessment Collaborating Centres Network with a remit to support the development and improvement of global AMR surveillance capacity. The network members are drawn from 18 WHO Collaborating Centres and are responsible for the implementation of the 2017-2019 work plan. Four priority areas of work in this plan include,

1. capacity building and technical support to microbiology laboratories,
2. capacity building and technical support to surveillance systems,
3. global AMR Surveillance System (GLASS) development,
4. and increasing the understanding of the impact of AMR.

For more information, please see the...

Today, during the 2016 UK-China High Level People-to-People Dialogue, the United Kingdom (UK) Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, and Chinese Science and Technology Minister, Wang Zhigang, will sign a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a new UK-China Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Research and Innovation Collaboration. This Memorandum is the first step towards the establishment of a new Global AMR Innovation Fund. The UK plans to provide up to £10 million between 2018 and 2020 towards joint projects led by UK and Chinese researchers, academics and businesses on the basis of match-funding from the Chinese government and from businesses. The scope and research priorities for this collaboration will...