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U.N. issues urgent warning on the growing peril of drug-resistant infections

U.N. issues urgent warning on the growing peril of drug-resistant infections

NEW YORK TIMES | With drug resistance growing and few new drugs in the pipeline, the world is facing an imminent crisis that could kill 10 million people a year by 2050, a surge in global poverty and an even wider gap between rich and poor countries, the United Nations warned in a report on Monday. The authors of the group called for the creation of an independent body with the stature and funding of the UN panel on climate change. “This is a silent tsunami,” said Dr. Haileyesus Getahun, director of the U.N. Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, which spent two years working on this report. “We are not seeing the political momentum we’ve seen in other public health emergencies, but if we don’t act now, antimicrobial resistance will have a disastrous impact within a generation.”

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