This week on the Wonkcast, I'm joined by Rachel Nugent, Deputy Director for Global Health here at the Center for Global Development. She is the lead author on a new CGD working group report entitled The Race Against Drug Resistance, which prescribes a global effort to halt and reverse the spread of drug resistant microbes.
In the Wonkcast, Rachel explains that the more people rely on antibiotics and other medicines, the faster disease pathogens adapt and become resistant. In rich countries, a resistant strain of staph now kills thousands per year-- most from hospital-acquired infections. The situation is more dire in the developing world. Rachel tells me that there is only one effective treatment remaining for malaria, and that some strains of tuberculosis are now completely untreatable.