Steering Against Superbugs


Book Description

The societal consequences of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are severe. They include declining health outcomes from longer illnesses, prolonged stays in hospital, loss of protection for patients undergoing medical procedures, increased health care expenditure, and increased mortality. They also include declining global food security as AMR damages farm animal health and crop yields. Despite AMR being a transboundary crisis, concerted global initiatives that effectively combat AMR have been few and far between. Steering Against Superbugs analyses ways to reduce barriers and create opportunities for coordination. The expert contributions in this volume offer specific and original insights about what global governance of AMR means, and ways to help solve AMR issues. They show that effective governance relies crucially on pursuing local level implementation of key policies, and equitable recognition of solutions across multiple sectors within countries, and across the Global North and South. With the COVID-19 pandemic, societies across the world have been reminded of the devastating consequences of not being able to effectively counter global health threats. AMR is arguably one of the most severe long-term threats to human, animal, and environmental health. There is momentum for global political action around novel and emerging disease threats and Steering Against Superbugs contributes with original and insightful research to inform ongoing and future debates.




Superbug


Book Description

For 50 years, medicine has attacked bacteria with antibiotics. But antibiotics put at risk our ability to resist disease. New plagues of infection caused by superbugs (bacteria that have learned to resist antibiotics) threaten our health. This book suggests that antibiotics do more harm than good.




Steering Against Superbugs


Book Description

"Many people correctly understand that superbugs can threaten health. Superbugs are microbial organisms, including bacteria, viruses, parasites, or fungi, that resist one or more antibiotic or other antimicrobial treatments. What may be less widely understood is that the threat is global, growing, and encompasses human systems surrounding healthcare, agriculture, and the environment. In 2019, 1.3 million people around the world are estimated to have died from resistant microbes (Murray et al., 2022). This is similar to how many succumb annually to HIV/AIDS and Malaria combined (Laxminarayan, 2022). The recent coronavirus pandemic may have further exacerbated the global health challenge posed by superbugs (Rizvi & Ahammad, 2022; Adebisi et al., 2021; Rodríguez-Baño et al., 2021). By 2050, worst-case projections include annual superbug fatalities of ten million people (O'Neil, 2016). Some experts have started to refer to the increase and spread of superbugs as the overlooked or silent pandemic (Laxminarayan, 2022; UN, 2020; Mahoney et al., 2021). Other experts warn that we might be heading towards a 'post-antibiotic' era where minor infections become increasingly severe or even impossible to treat (Reardon, 2014; Kwon & Powderly, 2021). Annual economic losses related to superbugs are already estimated in the tens of billion U.S. dollars (Hall, McDonell & O'Neil, 2018). As a response to these global challenges, this book analyses and discusses ways to reduce barriers to and create opportunities for global governance of antimicrobial resistance. Or more briefly, steering against superbugs"--




Exploring the Frontiers of Innovation to Tackle Microbial Threats


Book Description

On December 4â€"5, 2019, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a 1.5-day public workshop titled Exploring the Frontiers of Innovation to Tackle Microbial Threats. The workshop participants examined major advances in scientific, technological, and social innovations against microbial threats. Such innovations include diagnostics, vaccines (both development and production), and antimicrobials, as well as nonpharmaceutical interventions and changes in surveillance. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.




Clinical Pharmacology for Prescribing


Book Description

Linking disease processes to pharmacological interventions, Clinical Pharmacology for Prescribing gives a sound basis for evidence based prescribing.




Collaborative Crisis Management


Book Description

Public organizations are increasingly expected to cope with crisis under the same resource constraints and mandates that make up their normal routines, reinforced only through collaboration. Collaborative Crisis Management introduces readers to how collaboration shapes societies’ capacity to plan for, respond to, and recover from extreme and unscheduled events. Placing emphasis on five conceptual dimensions, this book teaches students how this panacea works out on the ground and in the boardrooms, and how insights on collaborative practices can shed light on the outcomes of complex inter-organizational challenges across cases derived from different problem areas, administrative cultures, and national systems. Written in a concise, accessible style by experienced teachers and scholars, it places modes of collaboration under an analytical microscope by assessing not only the collaborative tools available to actors but also how they are used, to what effect, and with which adaptive capacity. Ten empirical chapters span different international cases and contexts discussing: Natural and "man-made" hazards: earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, terrorism, migration flows, and violent protests Different examples of collaborative institutions, such as regional economic communities in Africa, and multi-level arrangements in Canada, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Switzerland Application of a multimethod approach, including single case studies, comparative case studies, process-tracing, and "large-n" designs. Collaborative Crisis Management is essential reading for those involved in researching and teaching crisis management.




Viruses Vs. Superbugs


Book Description

Each year thousands of people die from bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Alternative drugs are urgently needed. A surprising ray of hope from the past are viruses that kill bacteria, but not us. Award-winning science journalist Thomas Häusler investigates how these long-forgotten cures may help sick people today.




Fool Me Twice


Book Description

"Whenever the people are well informed," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "they can be trusted with their own government." But what happens in a world dominated by complex science? Are the people still well-enough informed to be trusted with their own government? And with less than 2 percent of Congress with any professional background in science, how can our government be trusted to lead us in the right direction? Will the media save us? Don't count on it. In early 2008, of the 2,975 questions asked the candidates for president just six mentioned the words "global warming" or "climate change," the greatest policy challenge facing America. To put that in perspective, three questions mentioned UFOs. Today the world's major unsolved challenges all revolve around science. By the 2012 election cycle, at a time when science is influencing every aspect of modern life, antiscience views from climate-change denial to creationism to vaccine refusal have become mainstream. Faced with the daunting challenges of an environment under siege, an exploding population, a falling economy and an education system slipping behind, our elected leaders are hard at work ... passing resolutions that say climate change is not real and astrology can control the weather. Shawn Lawrence Otto has written a behind-the-scenes look at how the government, our politics, and the media prevent us from finding the real solutions we need. Fool Me Twice is the clever, outraged, and frightening account of America's relationship with science—a relationship that is on the rocks at the very time we need it most.




WHO guidelines on use of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals


Book Description

WHO has launched new guidelines on use of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals, recommending that farmers and the food industry stop using antibiotics routinely to promote growth and prevent disease in healthy animals. These guidelines aim to help preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics that are important for human medicine by reducing their use in animals.




Challenges to Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance


Book Description

An accessible overview of the challenges in tackling AMR, and the economic and policy responses of the 'One Health' approach. It will appeal to policy-makers seeking to strengthen national and local polices tackling AMR, as well as students and academics who want an overview of the latest scientific evidence regarding effective AMR policies.