Antimicrobial Resistance & Stewardship

“A key to helping patients live even that long—a vast improvement from an average lifespan of 10 years just decades ago—is judicious use of antibiotics,” explains Andrea Hahn, M.D., a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Children’s National Health System in Washington D.C.

Antibiotics have been used to save countless lives for decades. What happens when these drugs we depend on are no longer effective? Imagine a scenario where routine surgeries and minor infections can frequently become life-threatening, and the cost of treatment increases substantially.

The Global Point Prevalence Survey (Global-PPS) is a free, online tool, developed by the University of Antwerp in Belgium, to measure and monitor antimicrobial prescribing and resistance in hospitals worldwide. Since its creation and launched in 2015, more than 90 countries have taken part in the initiative, involving 1,300 hospitals and 500,000 patients.

A failure of the antibiotics market is hampering vital innovation in this field. Researchers from the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) propose a new mechanism for compensating innovation, taking the form of a voucher that would be transferable.

Since 2019, bioMérieux has partnered with the Fleming Fund to provide high medical value diagnostic solutions, innovative data analytics tools and antimicrobial susceptibility testing in 15 countries located in the Africa and Asia Pacific regions.