WHO: Oslo meeting to garner increased global commitment to fight antimicrobial resistance
12-14 November 2014
[Excerpt]
Forty WHO Member States are meeting in Oslo on 13–14 November to give greater impulse to the fight against antimicrobial resistance. Their commitments and plans will feed into the WHO global action plan on antimicrobial resistance, up for agreement in 2015, and raise awareness of the need for global cooperation to tackle this silent but pervasive epidemic.
Resistance to a number of antimicrobials is a serious public health problem and it is affecting all countries. The Mekong countries, comprising Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, have for a number of years struggled with resistance to the best malaria medicine available, slowly reversing the important progress made in recent years in the fight against the disease. For drug-resistant TB, affecting about 700 000 people globally, there are few options and second line medicines are prohibitively priced for low- and middle-income countries. In high-income countries, resistance to common bacteria has turned mild ailments, such as urinary tract infection, into serious conditions treatable only with much costlier medicines…