The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a global campaign that urges countries to adopt its new online tool aimed at guiding policy-makers and health workers to use antibiotics safely and more effectively. Its another objective is to limit drugs that are at risk of resistance. With the emergence of infections that are untreatable by all classes of antibiotics, antimicrobial resistance has become "an invisible pandemic", says Mariângela Simão, assistant-director general for Access to Medicines at WHO.
In the absence of development of new drugs, "we must safeguard these precious last-line antibiotics to ensure we can still treat and prevent serious infections”, Simão said. The tool, known as ‘AWaRe’ , classifies antibiotics into three groups: Access — antibiotics used to treat the most common and serious infections Watch — antibiotics available at all times in the…
