Antibiotics have saved millions of lives from once deadly infectious diseases. But, misuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobials in humans and animals has led to bacteria evolving resistance. 3 April 2014 in Brussels, the Joint program on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR) presented its strategic research agenda which outlines the steps that need to be taken to minimise antimicrobial resistance, one of today's most serious public health threats. In addition to the 19 countries which include European countries as well as Canada and Israel, already signed up to this initiative, JPIAMR received support from countries ranging from Australia to South Africa during this meeting.
"It's a worldwide concern that resistance to antimicrobial drugs, which have allowed us to treat or prevent deadly infections and save many lives, especially children, is now spreading all over the world at increased speed, related with the increased mobility of people. It's therefore crucial to immediately join forces under one research agenda to achieve a substantial and rapid impact, especially on global health threats like HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria," said Fulvio Esposito from the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research.
Coming together globally is indeed crucial as the problem of antimicrobial resistance is so wide that the world now seems to be entering a post-antibiotic era in which sophisticated clinical interventions such as organ transplants, cancer chemotherapy or care for pre-term infants will become far more difficult due the threats of infections with multi-drug resistant bacteria. Resistance is so widespread that for some groups of bacteria, few antibiotics are effective enough anymore for therapy.
The Strategic Research Agenda (SRA)
JPIAMR has identified six priority topics which form a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA). These topics will give the fight against antibiotic resistance a multidimensional approach. The idea is that these approaches will be translated into new prevention and intervention strategies that improve the public health and wellbeing of populations and delivers economic and societal benefits throughout Europe and beyond.
"As this is an active research field and AMR is a very real and present societal challenge, the strategic research agenda will need to stay a living document that is continuously updated to keep pace with developments within research and society, "said Mats Ulfendahl, Swedish Research Council.
Operating at all relevant levels, from the scientific community to research funders and from policy makers and societal stakeholders to industry and SMEs, is the only way to reduce the inappropriate use of antibiotic use both in humans and animals to stop this trend from continuing and to ultimately find a more sustainable way to use antibiotics and treat disease.
Therefore, assisted by European Commission funding, the International Medicines Initiative (IMI), national funding contributions and public-private partnerships, the next step for JPIAMR is to fund research which fit within the six priority areas and which will contribute towards solving the AMR problem.
Why JPIAMR?
Aims
Objectives
What is joint programming?
Research efforts can be essential to address major societal challenges. In some cases these are so great that national research programs cannot tackle them effectively on their own. In addition, the vast bulk of research programs in Europe are run in an isolated way, leading to unwanted fragmentation or ineffectiveness. Joint programming aims to remedy this situation.
Joint programs aim to pool national research efforts in order to make better use of Europe's public R&D resources and to tackle common European challenges more effectively in a few key areas.
The ultimate objective is to overcome the fragmentation of national research programs to address global challenges.
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Materials provided by Swedish Research Council. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
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