Drug companies call for antibiotic funding
Antibiotic resistance has increased so much in recent years that it is now considered to be a serious risk to public health.
Pharmaceutical companies and industry bodies are warning of a "terrible human cost" unless new ways to fund antibiotics can be found.
In an open letter published in the Financial Times, the organisations urge the government to take urgent action. They also highlight warnings that around 10 million people a year could be killed by drug-resistant bacteria by 2050.
They write that without new antibiotics "everything from routine surgical procedures, to cancer chemotherapy, organ transplantation and even childbirth will become increasingly dangerous."
They add that if we fail to act now, "antimicrobial resistance is also expected to cost the world economy $100tn a year by 2050."
Antibiotic resistance has increased so much in recent years that it is now considered to be a serious risk to public health.
In 2014,the lack of existing antibiotics, together with the lack of new antibiotic treatments led the World Health Organisation to describe the situation as a "post-antibiotic era", where people can die from simple infections that have been treatable for decades.
The letter was signed by professor Colin Garner, chief executive of Antibiotic Research UK; prof Jayne Lawrence, chief scientist at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society; John Rex, a senior AstraZeneca executive; prof Luigi Martini, of King's College London; and Jeremy Lefroy MP.
The letter was also signed by Bioindustry Association chief executive Steve Bates, who told BBC News that companies' investment "needed to be rewarded," but without encouraging the overuse of antibiotics.
He suggested that the government set up a insurance-style scheme in which it paid a fixed fee for antibiotics, so that manufacturers didn't just focus on research into drugs that increased sales.
The BSAVA has opened submissions for the BSAVA Clinical Research Abstracts 2026.
