To celebrate our 50th anniversary, we’re inviting a select number of experts to share what they see as being the 21st-century solutions to one of the biggest and most complex challenges of our generation: antimicrobial resistance.

The 12th of December is International Universal Health Coverage Day, marked by the United Nations each year as a moment to raise awareness of the need for strong, sustainable and resilient health systems that ensure all people, everywhere, can get the quality health services they need without financial hardship.

It’s a truly terrifying moment when you come to understand that the world is losing one of its most powerful tools in healthcare: Antibiotics...

Superbugs – microbes that cause infections that are difficult or impossible to treat — are one of the biggest threats we face. They kill someone in the world every 45 seconds. That means by the time you finish reading this article, at least five more families will have lost a loved one. But there’s hope. Across the globe, community projects are doing what they can to stop superbugs – they just need us to lend a hand...

Antibiotic resistant infections, or ‘superbugs’, are one of the gravest threats we face. They already cause more than 750,000 deaths every year - or around one person every 40 seconds. Yet despite the scale of the issue, recognition remains low, especially amongst the general public. In this post, Edwin Panford-Quainoo explores how scientists, academics and health professionals can do more to spread the message about drug-resistant infections.

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) cause misery to millions every year, with around half of all women experiencing at least one UTI in their lifetime. Usually, they are simple to treat. Clinicians prescribe antibiotics empirically whilst awaiting the results of a urine culture. Yet the disruption to primary care caused by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has given rise to some troubling trends...

Up to 1.2 million women in Britain suffer from chronic – long-term – lower urinary tract (UTI) infections. Every year, UTIs are responsible for 184,000 unplanned hospital admissions, which cost the NHS around £434m to treat. Yet all too often, these infections are treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics, which only treat the symptoms not the underlying causes. In this post, Giovanna Forte, CEO of Forte Medical, talks about her own experiences with a chronic UTI infection, and the simple solution she hopes can bring relief to all...

When we talk about superbugs, much of the focus tends to be on drug-resistant bacterial infections. Yet the drugs we use to treat fungal infections are also beginning to fail, with devastating implications for our health. In this post, Jill Fairweather from the Aspergillosis Trust talks about how a ‘hidden’ fungal infection is already impacting patients’ lives and how environmental pollution is making a bad situation even worse...