At the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting (UNGA-HLM) on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in New York, governments signed a Political Declaration setting the agenda for global action to tackle the growing threat of AMR and work towards healthcare equity.
GRAM paper launch event highlights need for decisive action on AMR
The GRAM project led by Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the University of Oxford and funded by the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s Fleming Fund and Wellcome, released the latest GRAM paper, published in The Lancet.
This paper provides the most comprehensive analysis of bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) trends over time and, for the first time, also forecasts of the future burden of AMR deaths from now until 2050.
Whilst there has been some progress tackling AMR in recent years, the data shows us that it isn’t enough and more still needs to be done. Estimates now show us that a lack of action and demographic shifts will cause the burden to dramatically increase by 2050. The new estimates reveal that 39 million deaths directly attributable to bacterial AMR will occur between 2025-2050 – which equates to three deaths every minute.
An online launch event for the paper took place on 9th October to explore the key findings of the paper in more depth and discuss the implications, with a panel of experts including those behind the paper.
Dr Richard Horton (The Lancet) chaired, with Dr Tim Jinks (Wellcome), Dr Christopher Murray (IHME), Professor Dame Sally Davies (UK Special Envoy on AMR) and Dr Nour Shamas (WHO Taskforce of AMR Survivors) all on the panel.
I subscribe to the concept that if you don’t measure it, you don’t do anything about it, and you don’t manage it.
Professor Dame Sally Davies, UK Special Envoy on AMR
One key takeaway from the panel was that the evidence from the GRAM research is just one part of the puzzle in the fight against AMR. The important job remains what we do with the data, and the need for quick, decisive response from global leaders following on from September’s UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on AMR in New York.
We also heard about the importance of looking beyond the numbers at the ‘human face’ and experience of AMR and improving patient agency.
How can you think of systems improvement when the basics aren’t there? In [low resource] settings, patient agency is really important.
Dr Nour Shamas, member of the WHO Taskforce of AMR Survivors
Dr Nour Shamas also shared some useful guidance from the WHO Taskforce of AMR survivors around meaningful engagement of people with lived experience of AMR to advance international, national and local AMR agendas.
Watch the full launch event recording here.
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Studies & Reports
From Studies & Reports, Counting the human cost of AMR: The global research on AMR project , Date: 18/05/2022
In 2017, the researchers of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the University of Oxford developed a partnership to establish the human cost (burden) of AMR. This partnership gave birth to the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) project. Fast forward four years, 434 million individual records and 12,582 study-location-years' worth of data, and GRAM has become a household name for anyone in the industry.