The European Commission has been given two years to produce a comprehensive action plan to encourage the development of new effective antibiotics. The challenge is part of the strategy agreed by European Union health ministers on 1 December in the battle against antimicrobial resistance.

Göran Hägglund, Sweden’s Health and Social Affairs Minister, described the agreement as acknowledgment of the need to raise the provision of new antibiotics to the highest political level. “This is a neglected and urgent area where we must take action together. We find ourselves in a situation …