ReAct UHC Intervention at UNGA Multi-stakeholder Hearing for High-level Meeting on UHC

2019-04-29

ReAct UHC Intervention at UNGA Multi-stakeholder Hearing for High-level Meeting on UHC 29 April 2019 in New York

Thank you chair, ReAct – Action on Antibiotic Resistance is grateful for the opportunity to speak today.

No health system will be sustainable without effectively working antibiotics. Access to many of the miracles of modern day medicine – from cancer chemotherapy to organ transplant and everyday surgeries like C-sections – would no longer be safely available. The cost of healthcare would increase, with increased morbidity, mortality and extended hospitalization costs. We therefore ask that availability and affordability of effective antibiotics be made an integral part of the package of universal healthcare. Planning pooled, public sector procurement and government-coordinated production can help ensure healthcare systems reliably supply effective antibiotics, diagnostics and vaccines.

Antimicrobial Resistance should become a substantive part of the work on UHC and needs a measurable accountability mechanism. The World Bank projects that 24.1 million people could fall into extreme poverty by 2030 because of antimicrobial resistance. Most of these people would come from low- and middle-income countries falling into poverty. The WHO called antimicrobial resistance one of the Top 10 threats to Global Health in 2019. Yet the SDGs and the WHO/World Bank UHC Monitoring mechanism do not take into account Antimicrobial Resistance sufficiently.