Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

One question I am frequently asked since the COVID-19 pandemic is, "Are we more ready for the next pandemic than we were for the last one?"

My answer is “yes” and “no”.

Every year, more than 350,000 women die from cervical cancer and another 660,000 are diagnosed. As a consequence, children are orphaned, families impoverished and communities diminished by the loss of mothers, wives, daughters and sisters. 

And yet, unlike most other cancers, almost all these cases and deaths can be averted.

AMR threatens to unwind a century of medical progress, and could return us to the pre-antibiotic era, where infections that are treatable today could become much harder to treat and potentially deadly tomorrow.

AMR is caused largely by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medicines — such as antibiotics — making microbes resistant to them, and diseases more dangerous and deadly. It is associated with over a million deaths a year, with an escalating death toll projected over the coming decades.