News

Much has happened over this past decade—a pandemic, a seminal paper directly attributing over 1 million deaths each year to bacterial AMR, and a shift to One Health thinking—but the next decade will be pivotal in translating awareness into sustained action, innovative solutions, and global leadership to truly curb the threat of AMR. The latest Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) report is based on data reported from 104 countries, a four-fold increase from the 25 countries that contributed to the first GLASS report in 2016, suggesting that countries are engaging with the advocacy of the past decade. The closure of the Fleming Fund, without any clear replacement, severely hampers the global response to AMR and The Lancet Microbe echoes the call by the Microbiology Society and British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy for the UK Government to re-evaluate this decision and be transparent on the long-term strategy for AMR control. An audit of the UK National Action Plan against AMR, published in June, 2025, gave a damning account of the very little progress" that has been made domestically, with all clinical targets missed from the 2019–24 plan, and criticised the "insufficient transparency" by the Government."