Experts urge $2bn global fund to develop antibiotics
The global pharmaceutical industry should set up a $2.0 billion (1.8-billion euro) global innovation fund to help kickstart research into developing more resistant antibiotics, experts said on Thursday. The report was by the British government appointed Review on Antimicrobial Resistance committee, which has warned that drug-resistant microbes could kill 10 million people a year worldwide by 2050. “We need to kickstart drug development to make sure the world has the drugs it needs,” the review's author, economist Jim O'Neill, told the BBC. O'Neill, who used to work at Goldman Sachs investment bank, has also warned that antimicrobial resistance — when bugs become immune to existing drugs — could cost $100 trillion in lost economic output.