November 30, 2017
Dear Friend of CDDEP,
By the end of this holiday season, antibiotic resistance will have claimed 700,000 lives worldwide this year. The tide of resistant pathogens is rising steadily and pushing us into a world where the rich will be able to pay for the expensive antibiotics that work but the poor will die because antibiotics will be out of their reach.
Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted a world without antibiotics. The rate of discovery and development of new antibiotics has slowed, in part due to the availability of many antibiotics that work often but not all the time. The burden of infections that are not treatable with any current antibiotics, though a small proportion of all infections, is increasing. There is now a greater interest in new antibiotics. However, these will take time to arrive and are likely to be far more expensive than the drugs we have today.
Since its founding, CDDEP has relentlessly strived to highlight the burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the need for urgent action. Through the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP) project, we have helped 15 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia and Africa build broad-ranging strategies and policies to begin the social change needed to preserve antibiotic effectiveness over the long term. Working with many partners around the world, CDDEP has published multi-disciplinary research in animal, human and environmental health that is the basis for globally coordinated action against AMR. These efforts successfully culminated in bringing the focus on AMR during the high-level meeting of Heads of State at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2016. AMR was only the fourth ever health issue to make it onto the agenda of the UNGA, preceded by HIV/AIDS, non-communicable diseases, and Ebola.
CDDEP’s work strives to link scientific evidence and policy and drives further research. CDDEP’s data visualization tool, ResistanceMap, collects national and subnational data on antimicrobial resistance and use around the world, since 2010. It has helped inform researchers, policymakers and the public of important trends in antibiotic resistance and antibiotic use, worldwide.
Despite greater attention towards the issue at the international and national levels, AMR remains a public health issue of serious concern. The human cost: by 2050, 28 million people are likely to be pushed into poverty, mostly in developing countries. Given the potential impact on our lives, we need further research and evidence to understand the changing disease dynamics, antibiotic use and resistance. This is what CDDEP excels at.
We believe CDDEP’s work makes a difference to the world. Our research and on-the-ground engagement in many countries connect all dimensions of AMR, including animal, human and environment, which is the need of the hour.
We need your support to continue our work. Any amount will help.
I hope we can count on you.
Warm holiday wishes,
Ramanan Laxminarayan
Director and Senior Fellow, CDDEP
