On the advent of European Antibiotics Awareness Day, EFPIA takes note of the serious challenges caused by antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and reiterates the industry’s commitment to promoting a more responsible use of new antibiotic medicines.

It is essential that we address the emergence of new bacterial strains resistant to several antibiotics at the same time. Resistance is increasing and not enough antibiotics have been discovered and marketed in recent years, contributing to the problem of antibiotic resistance as a major public health threat. Solutions must be found to problems associated with global surveillance, R&D (public and private) efforts and financing, which are at present fragmented and sometimes duplicative. 

It is clear that the development of new antibiotics will require an overall increase in the level of investment. EFPIA believes that this funding must come from health systems, which benefit from and are responsible for the improved management of infection. Nevertheless, in line with our drive towards creating outcomes-driven health systems, they should only pay for success.

The pharmaceutical industry will support measures introduced to improve stewardship in order to ensure that any new antibiotics that do emerge from our pipeline are controlled and managed responsibly. We also stand ready to take the lead in ensuring that affordability is not a barrier to receiving new, life-saving antibiotics.

We believe that it is vital that we move swiftly towards a “one health” approach to tackling the AMR issue. While it is essential to address the issue of antibiotic use in animals, it is equally imperative that pharmaceutical companies and publicly-funded researchers agree to dedicate the development of a range of new antibiotics for human use alone.

EFPIA also stresses the need to move away from a business model for antibiotics based on volumes. Through de-linking revenues from selling – at least outside more developed countries – companies will no longer be incentivised to sell as much as they can. This would help remove one of the elements that are contributing to growing AMR globally.

EFPIA emphasises that the pharmaceutical industry cannot be in this fight alone and calls on all stakeholders to approach the issue in a spirit of global solidarity. We welcome the fact that the immense scale of the problem has received recently the acknowledgement it deserves, yet we urge all parties to translate the very useful ideas that have emerged into immediate action.