WHO Issues Urgent Call for New Drugs to Fight Superbugs

Drugmakers and regulators urgently need to create a pipeline of drugs to treat the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant diseases, the World Health Organization says in a new report.

The research and development pipeline for health technologies to address priority pathogens “has long been inadequate,” the WHO says in the 28-page report, titled “No Time to Wait: Securing the Future from Drug-Resistant Infections.”

A few dedicated funds have helped to “catalyze the pipeline of new antibiotics,” the WHO says, but more resources and incentives are needed to “expand the scope and scale of these efforts and to move products more rapidly into clinical trials and through to regulatory approval.”

But there is “little appetite on the part of donors to establish new global funding instruments specifically to address antimicrobial resistance,” says the report by the WHO’s Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance.