Pay drug companies $1bn for each new antibiotic, says report

Pharmaceutical companies should be given rewards of more than one billion dollars for each new antibiotic they bring to the market, according to the final report of an independent review on antimicrobial resistance.1

Around $40bn (£28bn; €35bn) needed to be spent during the next decade to fight “one of the biggest health threats that the world faces,” according to the Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally report, “with huge human and economic costs if we do not address it.”

The report was the result of a review chaired by Jim O’Neill, commercial secretary to the UK Treasury, which was commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron two years ago and funded by the government and the Wellcome Trust.

Worldwide, about 700 000 people died each year from drug resistant strains of bacterial infections, tuberculosis, malaria, and …