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Superbug threat as grave as climate change, say scientists

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Abstract

Such a body should be modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and work with governments and agencies who would implement its recommendations, Farrar said in a joint commentary in the journal Nature with Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University's Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution. RACE AGAINST TIME Only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed and brought to market in the past few decades, and it is a race against time to find more as bacterial infections increasingly evolve into superbugs resistant to even the most powerful last-resort medicines reserved for extreme cases. Woolhouse and Farrar said their vision of a similar body on antimicrobial resistance - which they dubbed the IPAMR or Intergovernmental Panel on Antimicrobial Resistance - would involve a broad range of experts, from specialists in clinical and veterinary medicine, to epidemiologists, microbiologists, pharmacologists, health economists and international lawyers. Creating an effective IPAMR will be a huge undertaking, but the successful global campaign to eradicate smallpox, led by the WHO, demonstrates that a coordinated international response to a public health threat can work," they wrote in the Nature commentary."
Key Data

  • Publication Date
    22 May 2014
  • Primary Author
    Kate Kelland
  • Source
    Yahoo! News
  • Language
    English
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