CITATION: Laxminarayan R, Limmathurotsakul D, de Abreu A et al.
Meeting the 2024 UN General Assembly declaration targets on antimicrobial resistance
The Lancet, 2026; 408, 195-198
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00979-7/fulltext
EXTRACT
“A substantial portion of AMR-associated mortality… reflects patients who never receive the correct antibiotic because of misdiagnosis, unavailability, or unaffordability; patients who receive substandard or falsified antibiotics; and patients who die of sepsis where appropriate supportive care could not be delivered.”
COMMENT (NPW)
Prescribers and users of medicine need reliable information on antibiotics. For prescribers, this includes guidance on which antibiotic to prescribe in different clinical contexts. For users, this includes greater awareness about when antibiotics are not indicated (especially for viral infections). https://www.hifa.org/projects/prescribers-and-users-medicines
Over 10 years ago WHO wrote ‘Globally, most prescribers receive most of their prescribing information from the pharmaceutical industry and in many countries this is the only information they receive.’ If this is still even partly true, this would represent a major continuing driver of antibiotic resistance.
A modest investment now to strengthen the global evidence ecosystem could help to avoid more than a trillion dollars in AMR costs by 2050 (World Bank estimate).
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org