Report on rising antimicrobial resistance calls for test to prescribe antibiotics

A blueprint to put an end to the menace of antimicrobial resistance calls on drug companies to foot the bill for the development of new antibiotics and patients to undergo a test to ensure the drugs were needed.

According to former Goldman Sachs Asset Management chairman Jim O'Neill, who currently serves in Prime Minister David Cameron's cabinet, who was tasked two years ago by Cameron to plan a strategy to meet one of the most pressing challenges in the world today, "the global financial cost of no action would be the loss of 10 million lives a year by 2050 and £69 trillion ($100 trillion) a year".

''One million people have died while we have been doing this review,'' said Lord O'Neill. He added, without action, there would be more people dying in the future than are dying of cancer.

Many antibiotics that were once said to have have put an end to infectious disease are no longer working as the bugs had become resistant to them. At one time, tuberculosis was once thought to be no longer a killer thanks to antibiotics, but multi-drug resistant tuberculosis had been exacting heavy death toll globally.

The two most noteworthy proposals advanced by O'Neill are  - Forcing the pharmaceutical industry to ''pay or play''. Drug companies would need to develop new antibiotics or be prepared to fund other companies to do so.

The second proposal is to ban doctors from prescribing antibiotics until they had carried out rapid tests to prove the infection was bacterial. ''We must stop treating antibiotics like sweets, which is what we are doing around the world today,'' he said.

Meanwhile, India's idea of putting a red line on antibiotic packages to curb their over-the-counter has been cited as a global model to counter the rising threat of superbugs, The Hindu reported.

The final report on tackling drug resistant infection released on 19 May, the global Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, commissioned by UK prime minister David Cameron in 2014 and chaired by economist Jim O'Neill, says India has led the way so far with its idea of a 'Red Line Campaign' for antibiotics packaging, which was launched earlier this year. The review recommends that labelling and symbols used could be improved if needed and then expanded globally.