At the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Thursday, all countries approved a major new political declaration to radically scale up efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) — a major threat to modern medicine. As director-general of the World Health Organization, I see this declaration as a strong signal from countries that they are committed to addressing this global threat.
AMR threatens to unwind a century of medical progress and could return us to the pre-antibiotic era, where infections that are treatable today could become much harder to treat and potentially deadly tomorrow.