Antimicrobial Resistance: Now is the Time for Collective Action

Quadripartite launches new Antimicrobial Resistance Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Platform to help tackle common threat to human and animal health and ecosystems

Rome/Nairobi/Geneva/Paris – The Antimicrobial Resistance Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Platform was launched today to ensure the growing threats and impacts of antimicrobial resistance are addressed globally.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), known as the Quadripartite are joining forces on this initiative to underscore the threat AMR presents to humans, animals, plants, ecosystems and livelihoods.

An estimated 1.3 million people around the world die each year directly due to bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR). If no action is taken, that number could soar dramatically, bringing higher public health costs and pushing more people into poverty, especially in low-income countries, underscoring the need for the Platform to mobilise further coordinated efforts.

Antibiotics and other antimicrobials play a key role in the success of modern medicine and have greatly improved the health of humans and animals. But overuse and misuse has reduced their efficacy, with more pathogens developing the ability to survive the antimicrobials designed to eliminate them.

AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial agents. As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents become ineffective and infections become difficult or impossible to treat, increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.

Moreover, 1.3 billion people rely on livestock for their livelihoods and 20 million people depend on aquaculture, especially in low and middle-income countries. The spread of resistant strains of pathogens inexorably affects their livelihoods, as it increases animal suffering and losses. Applications to crops, as well as unproper disposal of unused and expired drugs and waste from industries and communities can lead to pollution of soils and streams that spread the trigger for unwanted microorganisms to develop resistance to tools meant to contain and eliminate them.

The new Antimicrobial Resistance Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Platform is an inclusive and international forum bringing together voices from all areas, sectors and perspectives through a holistic and system-wide One Health approach, for a shared vision responding to the need to improve coordination of efforts by a large number of stakeholders.