European Commission Unveils New Antimicrobial Resistance Action Plan

The European Commission updated its 2011 action plan against antimicrobial resistance, pledging to boost research into new treatments and develop guidelines for the prudent use of the drugs.

The One Health action plan will tackle both human and veterinary sources of antimicrobial resistance, such as the inappropriate use of antibiotics in human patients and in food-producing animals.

The plan’s key elements include rulemaking reserving certain drugs for human use, defining a list of antimicrobials that cannot be used off-label and developing methods to track sales and usage. The EC also intends to gather data on links between antimicrobial administration and resistance, and to define a set of outcomes.