Working together with our communications company Bright Bee, ANTRUK has received considerable news coverage in printed media, radio and TV over the past few months. Much of this coincided with the publication of the Final Report of the O’Neill Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. Professor Garner is currently writing an opinion piece on the AMR review which has done a tremendous job of highlighting the problem of antibiotic resistance. On the finalisation of the O’Neill team’s work, a small gathering of those involved with the work of the team was held at the Wellcome Trust on Thursday 16 June 2016. I was lucky to be invited to this reception and had the opportunity of meeting Lord O’Neill as well as many other people concerned not only with producing the reports but also with spreading the word. These included Sir Andrew Witty, GSK, Lord Stern who authored the climate change report and representatives from the pharmaceutical industry. In the light of BREXIT it remains to be seen how many of the reports recommendations will be enacted particularly by the UK.
Antibiotic resistance could lead to as many as 1 person dying every three seconds around the globe. We need to ensure that this does not happen. ANTRUK is doing what it can as a small charity to highlight the problem and is looking forward to seeing the results of its first research programme on drug re-positioning.