Combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
As CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and as a medical doctor and infectious disease epidemiologist, I know only too well the dangers that AMR and drug-resistance pose, both to individuals and to global health security in general. Discovering new treatments to replace those that no longer work is critical and increasingly urgent, but one of the most powerful ways we have of fighting AMR is by preventing the infections in the first place with vaccines. Between 2015 and 2020 Gavi will have vaccinated hundreds of millions of children against important drivers of antibiotic use – meningitis and pneumonia – and in doing so prevented the use of more than 100 million doses of antibiotics. Because all of us need to be resistance fighters.
