Funding for research vital to tackle superbugs

On Saturday, donors to the Global Fund pledged nearly $13billion to eradicate the three deadly maladies — AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria — by 2030. The money is expected to help save 8 million lives. The Global Fund demonstrates that collective effort and global commitment can do wonders. Since 2002, the Fund has spent $30 billion to fight the three diseases. The programmes backed by the Fund have saved 20 million lives and averted 146 million new infections since 2012. Coming together of the world leaders, NGOs, philanthropists and private-sector partners has made this possible. At the Fund’s meeting on Saturday, the United States vowed an additional $4.3billion. The second largest donor, Britain, pledged $1.4 billion. France, Germany, Japan and Canada also contributed to achieve the Global Fund’s goal of raising $13billion to keep operations going through 2019. Some low-and middle-income countries also pledged contributions. One among them was Kenya, which made a contribution of $5 million.
The Global Fund has rightly been hailed as the “single largest multilateral
investment in a global health project in human history”. But despite the
resources and material support, the Fund faces daunting challenges ahead.
Each day, around 8,000 people are still being killed by the three diseases. And even as the battle to control these scourges continues, threat of growing drug resistance looms large. Drug resistance can cause the cost of treatment to zoom. Currently, the average price for treating TB is $400 per patient. This can increase to $15,000 if a drug-resistant form or mutant strain emerges. The potential menace of emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) calls for research and new drug development. Using the same knowledge and tools could allow the diseases to come back with a new vigour. We need innovative ways to fight the diseases and the Global Fund has to channelize the resources towards finding new methods and diagnostic tools to deal with the risk of drug resistance.
Epidemics like Ebola and Zika have jolted us. They have given a push to the need for scientific breakthrough to tackle these viruses. While Ebola and Zika need attention, it is important that we don’t take the other more familiar contagious diseases for granted. Complacency to fight the less dramatic ones will make it difficult to stop their spread.
The Global Fund has put 9.2 million people on antiretroviral treatment for HIV, provided TB treatment to 15 million people while distributing 659 million mosquito nets to protect families from malaria. All this is extremely commendable. However, the Fund needs to invest in sustained research to contain the risk of AMR. According to some estimates, by 2050, more people could die from antibiotic resistant infections than those who currently die from cancer. “This means that almost 10 million people would die from infections because they couldn’t be treated anymore,” warned Assistant Director-General of the UN World Health Organization Keiji Fukuda. He underlined that the cumulative economic loss on having to take care of people suffering from such infections and possible subsequent deaths could exceed $100 trillion by 2050. The Global Fund has to keep this scary scenario in mind, while it takes its campaign ahead. On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly is set to take up the problem of antimicrobial resistance. A coordinated global assault against ‘superbugs’ is the need of the hour!