November 2009

Dear Colleague,

We are very pleased to announce that the consultation draft report of CGD’s Drug Resistance Working Group was posted on-line today. As loyal readers of this newsletter know, the Working Group was created in 2007 to identify practical and feasible ways that the global donor community can prevent or contain the emergence of drug resistance in developing countries. We invite your comments and suggestions which will be considered in the preparation of a final Working Group report, anticipated to come out in spring 2010.

In other news, November saw the creation of a potentially exciting initiative - the launch of a EU/U.S. task force on antimicrobial resistance. The Task Force was announced during a November 3^rd summit with little detail about the scope of its mandate. We strongly urge the governments involved to address antimicrobial resistance as a global issue. Around the world people rely on many of the same drugs, and therefore are all at risk from drug resistant pathogens -- no matter where they originate. My colleague, Emma Back, and I provide more background and argue the case for expansion of this task force’s mandate in a recent blog.

Our guest column this month, by Robert Guidos, IDSA, also discusses the task force. IDSA, in a November 20^th letter urges President Obama and Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt (on behalf of the European Union Presidency) to establish an Antibacterial Drug Pipeline Work Group within the new AMR Task Force.

As always, we welcome your thoughts at [email protected].

Regards,

Rachel Nugent
Deputy Director for Global Health
Center for Global Development

MONTHLY GUEST COLUMN

New Transatlantic Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance: A Path Forward
By Robert J. Guidos, JD, Vice President, Public Policy and Government Relations
Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA)

Finally, there is some good news to report on the global antimicrobial resistance policy front.  Earlier this month, at a United States (U.S.) and European Union (EU) summit held in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, representing the EU Presidency, joined forces to establish a transatlantic task force (“Task Force”) to address antibiotic resistance.  Under the U.S./EU agreement, the Task Force will focus on appropriate therapeutic use of antimicrobial drugs in the medical and veterinary communities, prevention of both healthcare- and community-associated drug-resistant infections, and strategies for improving the pipeline of new antimicrobial drugs.  A concrete action plan is to be drawn up, and it is suggested that the Task Force report back at the 2011 U.S./EU summit. The inclusion of the Task Force within the summit’s agenda followed a concerted effort by EU and U.S. stakeholders, including the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), who sought greater international collaboration on these urgent and growing problems that threaten patient safety and public health worldwide.

READ MORE

RECENT / UPCOMING EVENTS

• Peruse materials, toolkits and publications supporting Europe’s 2^nd Annual Antibiotic Awareness Raising Day: 18 November, 2009
• View the 1^st AMR-specific edition of Eurosurveillance
• Search for resistance-related sessions from the 47^th IDSA annual meeting, Oct. 29-Nov. 1 in Philadelphia
• Submit an abstract for the 14^th International Congress on Infectious Diseases (ICID) (March 9-12, 2010 in Miami). The deadline has been extended to Nov 30^th

IN THE NEWS

Bacteria (besides TB)

• An update on banning non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals in the U.S. (Baltimore Sun)
• Resistance among gram-negative bacteria, resistant strains in young healthy populations, a paucity of drugs in the pipeline: key AMR issues from the annual IDSA meeting (Drugs.com)
• Evidence of multidrug resistant bacteria in Indian holy river (Expressbuzz.com) and of drug-resistant bacteria in Toronto tap water (CBC news)
• MRSA strain is linked to higher death rates (Eurekalert.com)
• Let’s take antibiotic use in farm animals back to the basics (Citizentimes.com)

• Tugela Ferry, South Africa, three years after the XDR outbreak (Plusnews.org)

• The many challenges of preserving artemisinin a view from Cambodia (Time.com)
• An update on artemisinin-resistant malaria parasites and insecticide-resistant mosquitoes: the MIM meeting in Nairobi (Xinhuanet.com)

• Plans to routinely test communities in Washington DC and parts of New York City for HIV (New York Times)
• More than inappropriate drug use! (Africanews.com)

Other

• IDSA urges President Obama and Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt to establish an Antibacterial Drug Pipeline Work Group within the new AMR Task Force
• WHO update on limited Tamiflu resistance (Canadian Press)
• Early steps towards an international convention on counterfeit drugs? (Time.com)
• Drug cocktail against resistant strains of H1N1 (Thaindian.com)
• 0.5% of H1N1 cases in U.S. resistant to Tamiflu; however there is no evidence of community-wide resistance (PalmBeachPost.com)
• First case of infection with drug-resistant swine flu in the Netherlands (AFP)

PARTNER RESOURCES

• The EU released its HIV/AIDS strategy for 2009-2013, which includes an emphasis on HIV drug resistance research. View press release, news summary
• The U.S. FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine announced the online availability of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System—Enteric Bacteria (NARMS) 2006 Executive Report
• View a Drug Policy Research Group October 7 presentation (and related links) on community-based surveillance of antimicrobial use in resource-constrained settings

LATEST DRUG RESISTANCE RESEARCH

• Automated use of WHONET and SaTScan to detect outbreaks of Shigella spp. using antimicrobial resistance phenotypes (Epidemiol Infect 2009 Oct 2:1-11, Stelling et al) (Abstract only)
• Efficacy of Short-Course AZT Plus 3TC to Reduce Nevirapine Resistance in the Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission: A Randomized Clinical Trial (PloS Medicine, October 2009, James A. McIntyre et al)
• Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing Loss to Follow-up in HIV Treatment Programs: A Côte d'Ivoire Appraisal (PloS Medicine, October 2009, E. Losina et al)
• Inferring within-patient HIV-1 evolutionary dynamics under anti-HIV therapy using serial virus samples with vSPA (BMC Bioinformatics, 29 October 2009, Naoki Hasegawa et al)