The United Nations Office at Geneva
Multimedia Newsroom
WHO - Press conference: update on drug-resistant bacteria
/
24:26
/
MP4
/
1.4 GB
WHO plans to release its updated Bacterial Pathogen Priority List (BPPL), featuring 15 families of antibiotic-resistant bacteria of public health importance. This revised list reflects how antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is evolving and highlights the importance of continuous research and development (R&D), surveillance, and investments to address emerging public health threats.
Like the first BPPL released in 2017, the bacteria are organized into critical, high, and medium priority tiers, offering a structured approach for targeted interventions and resource allocation.
Speakers:
- Dr Alexandra Cameron, Senior Advisor, and acting Unit Head of Impact Initiatives and Research Coordination, WHO AMR Division.
- Dr Hatim Sati, BPPL project lead. Technical Officer, WHO AMR Division.
Moderated by: Tarik Jasarevic, WHO spokesperson
Teleprompter
Good morning everyone from UN Headquarters in Geneva and welcome to this press point from the World Health Organisation on updated bacterial priority pathogen list we have sent yesterday to UN accredited the reporters press release.
This press point is not under embargo.
The press release alongside the report and others supporting documents will be published shortly on WHO website and available to everyone.
What we wanted really today is to bring you, our experts to tell you about this list.
You may have remembered that that in 2017 we issued what we call a bacterial priority pathogen list and since then lots of work has been done and now we are we are issuing updated lists.
So for that we have here Doctor Alexandra Cameron, who is our senior expert within WHO Department of Antimicrobial Resistance and Dr Hatim Sati, who is a project lead for this priority pathogen list within the same antimicrobial Resistance Department of the World Health Organisation.
So with that, I'll give the floor first to to Doctor Cameron to put a little bit the publication of this updated list into broader context of the antimicrobial resistance.
Dr Doctor Cameron.
Thank you very much and good morning.
Good afternoon.
We're pleased to be here today to announce the launch of the 2024 WHO Bacterial Priority Pathogens List, which identifies antibiotic resistant bacteria that pose the greatest challenge to human health due to antimicrobial resistance, or AM RAMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to our our current medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.
AMR is a public health crisis.
It's estimated that bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics were associated with close to 5 million deaths in 2019 and low and middle income countries bear the bulk of this burden.
For this reason, ensuring that we continue to have antibiotics available to treat drug resistant infections is a critical need.
However, the world is facing an antibiotic pipeline and access crisis.
Current research and development is insufficient to deliver the innovative antibiotics we need to treat drug resistant infections and many countries are facing a lack of equitable access to new antibiotics as well as to existing antibiotics.
The Bacterial Priority Pathogen List categorises antibiotic resistant bacteria into critical, **** and medium priority groups by identifying resistant bacteria that pose the greatest challenge to public health.
The list aims to guide research and development of new antibiotics as well as public health interventions to areas of greatest need.
The first Bacterial Priority Pathogen list was published by WHO in 2017.
Since that time, it's played a crucial role in guiding investments in research and development towards priority pathogens.
However, we still do not have the pipeline that we need.
The list has also served as a basis for activities related to surveillance and control of AMR.
The 2017 WHO Bacterial Priority Pathogens List has been updated to reflect the evolving nature of AMR and to incorporate new evidence on AMR disease burden and trends.
The new list emphasises the need to intensify research and development as well as public health efforts against resistant bacteria that represent the greatest public health ******, especially in low and middle income countries.
The bacterial priority pathogen list is one of a number of steps that WHO is taking to address the antibiotic pipeline and access crisis.
WHO also assesses the antibacterial research and development pipeline on an annual basis and will soon be publishing the next edition, which looks at the current state of the pipeline against the updated priority list.
I'll now hand over to my colleague Dr Hatim Sati, who will provide an overview of the key highlights of the new WHO Bacterial priority pathogens list.
Thank you, Ali, and good morning, everyone and thank you for your time and attention today.
I am Doctor Hatim Sati, the technical lead for the project and I'm pleased to share the top line results from the 2024 updates of the bacterial priority pathogens list.
Over the past two years, we've conducted an extensive comprehensive assessment of the most threatening antibiotic resistant bacteria.
The scientific assessment considered factors such as mortality, disability caused by these bacteria, their preventability, transmissibility, resistance and the availability of treatment options, including treatment candidates in the pipeline.
Accordingly, we have categorised the pathogens into three priority categories.
These categories are labelled critical, **** and medium.
First, I'd like to highlight some of the critical priority pathogens in the critical category.
Gramme negative bacteria resistant to the last resort antibiotics remain a critical concern.
They cause severe infections like pneumonia, complicated intra abdominal infections, complicated urinary tract infections and bloodstream infections, especially in hospitalised patients.
These bacteria are notorious for their ability to acquire resistant to avid killing but also to share these tricks among one another to evade the available antibiotics.
These multi drug resistant gramme negative bacteria are of major concern due to their **** mortality and **** economic burden globally.
Also newly categorised into the critical category in the 2024 update is multi drug resistant TB.
Multidrug resistant TB disease is exceedingly difficult to treat.
It poses a significant ****** to the global TB prevention and control efforts as it's associated with **** morbidity and mortality, especially among vulnerable populations.
Next, I'd like to emphasise some examples of bacteria from the **** priority category.
In this category, and probably this is one of the major updates, community pathogens prevalent in low and middle income countries such as Salmonella Taifi, Shigella gained prominent placement in the updated highlight and this highlights the prominence of these pathogens globally.
These pathogens are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics leading to a higher disease burden, especially among vulnerable groups.
Take for example Salmonella Typhi, the causative agent of typhoid fever.
It leads to a potentially life threatening illness and in severe cases it can lead to intestinal perforation and systematic systematic infections and death.
Shigella is known for causing a highly contagious diarrheal diseases.
It can lead to severe dehydration and in some cases can be fatal, particularly to young children and individuals with immunocompromised systems.
Also in the **** priority category is multi drug resistant Nycera gonorrhoea.
Gonorrhoea is a prevalent STI, as you may know, and the untreated infections disproportionately impact young adults and particularly women in low and middle income countries, leading to complications like infertility, pelvic inflammatory disease and others.
The rise of antibiotic resistant has made treatment of gonorrhoea more challenging and therefore it is categorised in the **** category.
One last example from this category is methicillin resistant Staph aureus or MRSA for short.
MRSA infections present challenge in various healthcare settings especially in long term assisted living facilities across the world.
Outbreaks are happening and reported since 2017 regularly.
The economic burden as well as the fatal burden of this infection is large and particularly impacting hospitalised patients in healthcare facilities across the world.
Lastly, the medium priority category includes new additions to the list bacteria such as Group A and Group B, striptococci and Striptococcus pneumoniae.
These bacteria can be resistant to various antibiotics and can cause range of infections mostly impacting vulnerable population particularly in elderly and newborns.
Take for example striptococcus Group A.
It can cause mild or asymptomatic infections in adults.
However, in newborns it can lead to new Natal sepsis.
It can lead to meningitis, which is the inflammation of the brain covering and in severe cases it can result in bacteremia and death.
To protect babies, you need access to quality preventive antibiotics and access to quality healthcare systems.
These are just some of the highlights, but the list also covers other important antibiotic resistant bacteria and we invite you to review the list and the report for more details.
One important point we would like to emphasise is the importance of tailoring and contextualising the list, considering factors such as geography, ecology variation, healthcare infrastructure and population demographics.
Regional Health authorities, National Health authorities and local healthcare professionals are encouraged to read this list carefully and tailor it depending on their population's unmet need and their local context.
In Conclusions.
In conclusion, our findings_the evolving nature of antimicrobial resistance infection, disease infectious, and infectious diseases emphasising, the urgent need for collaborative efforts to address drug resistant bacterial pathogens at.
The heart of this is prioritising sustained investments in research and development of new tools to address these infections surveillance.
Prevention, and control are crucial in mitigating antimicrobial resistance and in safeguarding global public health thank.
You very much for your attention and we're happy to take questions thank.
You very much Doctor Cameron And Doctor Sati For this comprehensive overview of the updated list.
I'll just see if we have questions from reporters online.
Christiana Uluri from German news agency DPA Christian.
Thank you, Terry.
Yes, 20/17/2024 that's seven years.
What has been done on the one that was and still is on the top of the priority list?
Senator Bakht Baumani, the question is, do you see any, do you see enough reaction to your, to your call for more investment and more research if seven years later the same bacteria is still on the top of the priority list?
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
That's an excellent question.
In fact, since the release of the list in 2017, as Doctor Cameron alluded, there has been a new antibiotics targeted towards these critical pathogens.
About 9 antibiotics entered the market.
However the issue is 2 folds.
The first fold is the innovative level in these new antibiotics.
Most of these new antibiotics tend to be spin offs of existing classes of antibiotics and therefore they are not or resistance is quickly developed towards these pathogens.
The second fold and maybe Ali can elaborate on that is an issue of access to these newly developed drugs.
Newly developed drugs tend to be costly and tend to be limited upon their introduction to **** income settings for multiple reasons, and we're happy to to get into some of these factors.
So what's needed is sustained investment that focuses on innovation, truly innovative antimicrobials, and also prevention and control measures.
This is a huge gap, especially in law and middle income countries.
Prevention and control is still largely sub optimal and underfunded and we also need to invest in access to quality healthcare, access to quality medicines and and new and old antibiotics as well.
Sure.
Yes, I'm happy to also add on as as Doctor Hatty said, the problem is of resistance is is an ongoing issue.
And even though we have had some successes in past years of bringing to market new products against priority pathogens, we will need to continue to replenish the supply of new products to keep pace with the resistance that's developing sometimes even before the products are even launched.
So that was was one thing I wanted to emphasise.
And then with respect to access, indeed many of the products that are becoming available are what we call last resort products.
We would like to save them and use them for the most, you know, the most tenacious, most drug resistant infections.
And this means that the market for these products is extremely small.
And as a result, there isn't enough of an incentive for suppliers to first of all develop those products and then supply them in a wide range of countries, particularly in low and middle income countries.
So what we see with many of these new products is that they are not registered or available in many countries.
And when they are, you know, there is often an issue of affordability as well.
So addressing some of these challenges of access alongside the R&D challenges is really what we need to do to both develop new products, but also make sure that they're available to the patients who need them.
Thank you.
Christian, do you have a follow up?
Yes, thank you.
Derek, a follow up, these nine new antibiotics that enter the market, was it targeted on the on the one that is still that is still on the top of the disc or was that on all the is that about an antibacterium that is used for several of those bacteria on the list?
Thank you.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, the new antibiotics that entered the market indeed this this ones that we flagged are targeting specifically critical priority gramme negative bacteria.
This of course includes Asenotobacter bomani, but also bacteria belonging to the family of interior bacterialis and or the order of interior bacterialis as well as Pseudomonasarigenosa.
There are very few of these 9 that are actually proven to be effective against multidrug resistant Acidotrobacter bomani and overall multidrug resistant Gramme negative bacteria remain challenging due to the limited options available for their treatment and so the targeting of these specific pathogens needs to be intensified.
We need to also have an approach that addresses specific resistance mechanisms.
There is no shortage of, let's say antibiotics that address certain common mechanisms of resistance and that's of value.
Of course, these are **** burden infections, but there are still some challenging mechanisms of resistance that we need innovative antibiotics that target these specific mechanisms of resistance and and in this case ascent to bacter Pomani is on the top of the list to to be targeted through this innovative approach.
Thank you so much, Doctor Hati Catherine Fiancan Bokonga France Venkat.
Yes.
Good morning to all of you and good morning, Tarek.
Thank you.
For organising the briefing, Doctor Sati, could you please share your notes with Tarek so he will be able to mail it to us?
It would be very useful.
Thank you so much and.
I have a.
Question related to TB.
Could you please elaborate a little bit more on TB?
How difficult it would be to treat TB?
What could be done to identify TB as we know that there are more and more cases and that people don't think about it.
I mean, it's not, I suppose in the normal process of investigation when someone is sick.
So what, what could be done about it?
Thank you so much for your answer.
Thank you very much.
Indeed, TB remains one of the most critical global health threats and TB is addressed within the WTO, as you know, through a specialised programme, the TB programme.
So I'm going to provide perhaps a limited response on behalf of our colleagues, but we're happy to also take inquiries to the, the, the programme of TB in terms of resistant multi drug resistant TBTB overall, as you said is a challenging, it's a challenging disease because of its dynamics, its disease process, its course, because of the population that it impacts, often times vulnerable populations with underlying infections or immunocompromised status, access to TB care, diagnostics, quality treatment, prevention, control measures remain still very limited globally, especially in the highest burdened settings.
Additionally, TB of course, is a disease of poverty.
It impacts the least in society and that makes it further complicated.
When you add to this picture the limited number of treatments that are approved through guidelines and through clinical trials for treatment of TB, you can see immediately that antimicrobial resistance can further complicate this.
Limited options available.
The available options to treat TB as well have number of issues.
A They are combination therapies so you need multiple drugs to treat TB.
They tend to be very prolonged, raising issues around compliance and side effects.
They also tend to be impacted, as I said, because of the prolonged treatment and other factors, by antimicrobial resistance.
So indeed TB is a very important priority for The Who and in this list TB has been categorised into the critical critical category For these reasons.
Thank you very much, Doctor Sati and Dr Cameron, I don't see any further questions from journalists in the room.
So just to remind you that you have received the press release with all this information that has been presented today.
It will be sent to a global media list shortly.
Also the report itself will be posted with the with the more details.
And if you have any further question on the topic of antimicrobial resistance, don't hesitate to contact WTO media team.
And I'm sure Doctor Hati and Dr Cameron will be happy to to get in touch with you.
With this, we will conclude this press briefing from the World Health Organisation.
Thanks to colleagues in Eunice for logistical support and wish you a nice day.