Broad availability of drugs to treat some of the world's most dangerous diseases, such as malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis is having a markedly ill effect: growing drug resistance among the very people those drugs are intended to help.

 

“We are losing our ability to cure common diseases to an invisible adversary: the drug resistant bug," say authors of a new report published by the Center for Global Development.

 

Diseases common for children in developing countries, such as pneumonia and dysentery, are no longer curable by many older antibiotics, the report says. That's leading to millions of deaths in those countries.

 

In richer countries, such as the United States, the prevalence of superbugs like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureas, jumped to more than 50 percent from just 2 percent of staph infections between 1974 and 2004, leading to tens of thousands of deaths there as well.

 

To combat the problem, experts assembled by the center recommend better tracking and sharing of resistance information between nations to get a better grip on the problem; a tightening of the drug supply chain to ensure drug quality and correct use; a strengthening of drug regulatory authorities in developing countries to help align treatment guidelines and control counterfeiting; and new investment in the development of resistance-fighting technologies.

 

The report identifies the European Commission's Innovative Medicines Initiative as being especially “well suited to support academic and industry researchers to explore jointly issues related to drug resistance.”

 

It also advocates for the establishment of a web-based marketplace “to share resistance-specific research and innovation across diseases,” saying that “later-stage biopharmaceutical companies, venture capitalists, and foundations or public funders (such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health or the UK’s Wellcome Trust) could use the marketplace as a one-stop-shop to decrease significantly the transaction costs of evaluating innovations or discoveries that may be worth in-licensing, funding, or otherwise linking to.”