In this episode of Smart Health, we hear from a sufferer of Antimicrobial Resistance, the deadly disease which has researchers and authorities scrambling for solutions.
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00:00 Back in 2013, Inaki Moran spent 20 consecutive days in bed.
00:06 His body had been ambushed by bacteria resistant to medicines.
00:11 It was to be the first in a long list of similar attacks.
00:15 I was regularly admitted to hospital.
00:18 I was admitted in 2016, in 2017 and in 2018
00:23 with different bacteria, different germs.
00:27 (MUSIC)
00:30 63-year-old Inaki suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
00:40 He's also been treated for colon and lung cancers.
00:44 Bacteria resistant to treatments caused further havoc in a body already at the edge.
00:50 My quality of life was greatly reduced.
00:54 At the end, pulmonary transplant was jeopardised.
00:58 If the lungs are persistently infected, as was the case with me,
01:02 then the transplant can simply be called off.
01:05 In the end, I was lucky. I had a double lung transplant.
01:08 The worst was avoided.
01:10 Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, is mainly driven by overuse
01:16 and misuse of antibiotics, antiseptics and antifungals.
01:21 It affects humans, animals, plants and the environment.
01:25 AMR causes some 35,000 deaths every year in the European Union,
01:30 with annual health care costs and productivity losses estimated at 1.5 billion euros.
01:36 Regular seminars help EU patients, physicians,
01:47 pharmaceutical representatives, researchers and policy makers
01:51 discuss prevention and control measures of what they call a silent pandemic.
01:56 Experts agree antimicrobial resistance is among the top three health threats
02:01 currently faced by the European Union.
02:04 Dr Soriano Cuesta is the head of the internal medicine unit
02:12 in a large public hospital in Madrid.
02:16 There are extensive epidemiological studies involving more than 1,000 intensive care units
02:22 showing that on a given day, more than 50% of the patients admitted have an active infection,
02:28 and half of those cases are hospital-acquired infections.
02:31 This is a very serious issue, and unfortunately at the ICU,
02:35 the infections are often multidrug-resistant bacteria.
02:39 A lethal, complex and urgent situation that the European Commission has proposed to address
02:45 by reducing the consumption of antimicrobials by 20%.
02:50 The European Commission wants to also encourage the development of new antibiotics,
03:03 for instance by giving developers an extra year of regulatory data protection.
03:09 Since the 1980s, we have not had any novel antimicrobials developed.
03:15 So we needed to provide strong incentives for new, for novel antimicrobials to be developed.
03:22 We're doing this by proposing the transferable exclusivity vouchers.
03:27 We need to also work on advocating on the prudent use of antimicrobials
03:33 and on addressing the abuse of antimicrobials.
03:37 But at the same time, we need to support the European pharmaceutical industry so that they innovate,
03:43 so we have new products on the market.
03:45 The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations says they are also ready to play their role.
03:53 In 2020, we proposed a fund of one billion US dollars until 2030,
04:05 with the objective of finding two to four new antibiotics.
04:08 And this was a sort of a bridging fund to help small biotechs that you saw have been failing,
04:13 to be able to produce antibiotics.
04:15 But it cannot replace a proper system of incentives.
04:21 And patients conclude public awareness is equally important.
04:26 I think that if all patients know about their diseases, in this case antimicrobial resistance,
04:34 if they know what the symptoms are, what the treatment is, if they are prepared,
04:39 then they are going to be active patients.
04:42 They are really going to put up barriers against all this.
04:45 And that's what we patients are trying to spread, our knowledge based on experience.
04:51 [Music]
04:55 [Music]
04:58 (chimes)