Community engagement

ReAct Asia Pacific: Antibiotic Smart Communities as a way forward

Can there be such a thing as an antibiotic smart community? If so, how could processes towards this be initiated and systematically approached? These questions, and an urging feeling that to be able to implement the National Action Plans on Antimicrobial Resistance there is a need for a bottom-up engagement approach. Communities need to engage for action on the global health challenge we all are facing – drug-resistant bacteria. With this mindset, ReAct Asia Pacific initiated the project Antibiotic Smart Communities.

WAAW news

ReAct Asia Pacific: Competitions, webinars, social media campaigns and new Indonesian declaration on AMR

Interactions with media, students and health professionals formed the highlight of various events held to mark the World Antibiotic Awareness Week in the Asia Pacific region. Learn more in article below.

Competition final

Innovate4Health: 16 finalists from 12 countries!

Sixteen finalist teams have been selected for the Innovate4health global design sprint, representing a new generation of innovators that will address the challenges of emerging infectious diseases.

Via this sprint, university and graduate-level student innovators from across the globe propose creative solutions to address the growing challenge that emerging infections such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and COVID-19 pose. Learn more about the finalist teams and their ideas.

Release film

Otto Cars has dedicated his life to the fight against antibiotic resistance

The silent pandemic – this is what the challenge of increasing antibiotic resistance in our society is called at times. Treatments are made more difficult in healthcare, lives are lost. Professor Otto Cars has devoted his entire professional life as a doctor and researcher by alerting the world to the risks of this silent pandemic. To commemorate World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, Uppsala University releases a 16 minute long film portraying Otto Cars and his life-long engagement.

Interview

Sweden: Pernilla’s 8-day old daughter died from sepsis – caused by resistant bacteria Klebsiella

When Pernilla Rönnholm from Gothenburg, Sweden, gave birth to her twins Kirsty and Freya, only one of the girls survived. Kirsty died 8 days old from multi-drug resistant bacteria. Listen to the family’s story in an interview with the mother, Pernilla.

Research and development

5 challenges that governments need to address in resolving the stagnation in antibiotic development

We are now well into a third decade of failure and standstill in developing new antibiotics. Meanwhile resistance to all of our existing antibiotics continues to develop across the world and antibiotic resistance was the cause of 1.2 million deaths in 2019, more than for HIV/AIDS and malaria.

The traditional market-based financing model for research and development of new antibiotics continues to fail. The reason for the lack of innovation is often presented as a matter of insufficient profitability for the pharmaceutical industry. However, there are significant scientific challenges that remain unresolved, which contributed to large pharmaceutical companies abandoning the field over the past decades.

Science

The impact of antibiotic resistance on cancer treatment, especially in low-and middle-income countries, and the way forward

The growing antibiotic resistance burden is a global public health issue that needs to be addressed urgently, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where health infrastructure is lacking or under-resourced and cancer treatment is already difficult to access, expensive, and requires high out-of-pocket expenditure.

This article considers the challenges faced by the cancer community, how antibiotics are used in cancer treatments and the impact of antibiotic resistance on low- and middle-income countries , and offers four key areas that need to be addressed by the cancer community in order to make progress against the threat of antibiotic resistance.

Theme

COVID-19 and antibiotic resistance

ReAct articles relating to COVID-19 and antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotic resistance

In the last 70 years the use of antibiotics has been crucial in improving countless lives and drastically reducing deaths caused by bacterial infections. The increasing development of antibiotic resistance is posing a serious threat to human health and development, the environment and for animal health. Learn more about antibiotic resistance here.

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The ReAct Toolbox

The ReAct Toolbox is a user-friendly web-based resource that provides inspiration and guidance to take action and develop national action plans on antibiotic resistance. It is built on what has been done in the past in a variety of settings, and is aligned with ongoing and current initiatives from across the globe.