'The silent pandemic': What is the EU doing to fight Antimicrobial Resistance?

euronews (in English)

In this episode of Smart Health, we hear from a sufferer of Antimicrobial Resistance, the deadly disease which has researchers and authorities scrambling for solutions.

Transcript

00:00 Back in 2013, Inaki Moran spent 20 consecutive days in bed.

00:06 His body had been ambushed by bacteria resistant to medicines.

00:11 It was to be the first in a long list of similar attacks.

00:15 I was regularly admitted to hospital.

00:18 I was admitted in 2016, in 2017 and in 2018

00:23 with different bacteria, different germs.

00:27 (MUSIC)

00:30 63-year-old Inaki suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

00:40 He's also been treated for colon and lung cancers.

00:44 Bacteria resistant to treatments caused further havoc in a body already at the edge.

00:50 My quality of life was greatly reduced.

00:54 At the end, pulmonary transplant was jeopardised.

00:58 If the lungs are persistently infected, as was the case with me,

01:02 then the transplant can simply be called off.

01:05 In the end, I was lucky. I had a double lung transplant.

01:08 The worst was avoided.

01:10 Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, is mainly driven by overuse

01:16 and misuse of antibiotics, antiseptics and antifungals.

01:21 It affects humans, animals, plants and the environment.

01:25 AMR causes some 35,000 deaths every year in the European Union,

01:30 with annual health care costs and productivity losses estimated at 1.5 billion euros.

01:36 Regular seminars help EU patients, physicians,

01:47 pharmaceutical representatives, researchers and policy makers

01:51 discuss prevention and control measures of what they call a silent pandemic.

01:56 Experts agree antimicrobial resistance is among the top three health threats

02:01 currently faced by the European Union.

02:04 Dr Soriano Cuesta is the head of the internal medicine unit

02:12 in a large public hospital in Madrid.

02:16 There are extensive epidemiological studies involving more than 1,000 intensive care units

02:22 showing that on a given day, more than 50% of the patients admitted have an active infection,

02:28 and half of those cases are hospital-acquired infections.

02:31 This is a very serious issue, and unfortunately at the ICU,

02:35 the infections are often multidrug-resistant bacteria.

02:39 A lethal, complex and urgent situation that the European Commission has proposed to address

02:45 by reducing the consumption of antimicrobials by 20%.

02:50 The European Commission wants to also encourage the development of new antibiotics,

03:03 for instance by giving developers an extra year of regulatory data protection.

03:09 Since the 1980s, we have not had any novel antimicrobials developed.

03:15 So we needed to provide strong incentives for new, for novel antimicrobials to be developed.

03:22 We're doing this by proposing the transferable exclusivity vouchers.

03:27 We need to also work on advocating on the prudent use of antimicrobials

03:33 and on addressing the abuse of antimicrobials.

03:37 But at the same time, we need to support the European pharmaceutical industry so that they innovate,

03:43 so we have new products on the market.

03:45 The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations says they are also ready to play their role.

03:53 In 2020, we proposed a fund of one billion US dollars until 2030,

04:05 with the objective of finding two to four new antibiotics.

04:08 And this was a sort of a bridging fund to help small biotechs that you saw have been failing,

04:13 to be able to produce antibiotics.

04:15 But it cannot replace a proper system of incentives.

04:21 And patients conclude public awareness is equally important.

04:26 I think that if all patients know about their diseases, in this case antimicrobial resistance,

04:34 if they know what the symptoms are, what the treatment is, if they are prepared,

04:39 then they are going to be active patients.

04:42 They are really going to put up barriers against all this.

04:45 And that's what we patients are trying to spread, our knowledge based on experience.

04:51 [Music]

04:55 [Music]

04:58 (chimes)

Category

Transcript

Recommended