Because G7 Health wants to attack antibiotics
Enrico Martial's in-depth analysis of the conclusions of the G7 Health
The G7 Health which was held in Oxford, United Kingdom, on 3 and 4 June, with our minister Roberto Speranza present , not only spoke about anti-covid vaccines, but also about the unity of health – animal, human, environmental, ie One Health – digital in healthcare, research, and antibiotic resistance. The latter theme has been returning for years, and is considered a super-problem, a "creeping pandemic" that requires an expensive, complicated and difficult effort, like the major contemporary problems, from climate change to nuclear risk, from population expansion to spread of new epidemics.
The conclusions underline the amplification effect caused by Covid, which has led to a greater use of antibiotics and in any case accentuated the effect of antibiotic resistance in the effort to counter the pandemic, when other medicines have often been deficient. The search for new medicines, the recovery of others less interesting for the market, the collective efforts to address the issue, from the reduction of infections to the investments required, are then evoked.
According to the OECD , the deaths on a global scale are 700 thousand per year, but the point is that resistance to antibiotics is increasing, with estimates that foresee almost 10 million deaths in 2050. Then there is the question of costs: in Europe and North America, which register about 50 thousand deaths a year, the treatments that try to evade this resistance vary between 10 thousand and 40 thousand euros per patient, with a greater outlay of 23 billion dollars. In 2050, the impact on GDP of the group of OECD countries could reach 2.9 trillion dollars., Mind-boggling.
Thus, on May 26, before the G7, the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, Stella Kyriakides and the WHO Director General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, presented a joint letter in which they bring the issue back to global attention. Europe had moved on the issue since 1998 with a surveillance system and since 2001 with a strategy against antibiotic resistance. At the UN, 193 countries signed a declaration in 2016, and several partnerships were born, from the AMR Industry Alliance, with a hundred biotech companies and laboratories to CARB-X with accelerators, to the European Innovative Medicines Initiative (Imi) with 650 million euros, to other complex structures, such as GARDP and BARDA. A coordinating Global Group was created within the United Nations in 2019.
The point for Europe is legislative. With the Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen, health, even if formally and in part substantially remains a national policy, was first taken on board at European level with the themes written in the 2019 mission letter to Commissioner Stella Kyriakides (fight to cancer, antibiotic resistance, rare diseases) to then gain common strength with the pandemic.
As regards the health sector, to stay in Italy, for example, measure 2.2 of the NRP, the Recovery and Resilience Plan, intended among other things to reduce the risk of contracting infections during a hospital stay, should be read in this perspective, estimated in 2016 at 8% . Italy, which adopted its own strategy in 2017 , is a country well exposed to antibiotic resistance: in 2015, 10,700 deaths were estimated, a third of the 33,000 registered in Europe, according to the Lancet magazine .
However, since antibiotic resistance is framed in the One-Health strategy, which combines medicine, veterinary medicine and the environment, the European measures are also aimed at managing and containing the use of antibiotics in the treatment of animals. On the other hand, 70% of antibiotics on a global scale are used in farming, with an estimated 67% growth between 2010 and 2030, according to the United Nations.
The European political-legislative strategy "Farm to Fork" plans to reduce the sale of antibiotics to farms and aquaculture by 50% by 2030 and to introduce management mechanisms with the new regulations on veterinary medicine ( 6/2019) and medicated feed (Medicated Feed, 4/2019). With the delegated acts currently under discussion, implementation will start in January 2022.
In particular, the systematic use of antibiotics on farms is prohibited, to make up for hygienic deficiencies or to increase productivity, admitting them only for the individual animal, due to a real risk of spreading the infection and because there are no suitable alternatives. The productive adaptation and the economic impact of the measures will be guided in Europe by the Common Agricultural Policy, which now takes into account the Green Deal, health and biodiversity, starting with intermediate rules for 2021 and 2022 and then moving into full operation. to the new system.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/perche-il-g7-salute-vuole-aggredire-gli-antibiotici/ on Mon, 07 Jun 2021 14:44:08 +0000.