Dr Julia Bielicki and Professor Mike Sharland from the CNPI published a paper in the December 2022 Bulletin of the World Health Organization, alongside experts from the not-for-profit organisation Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP) and Penta – Child Health Research, an international independent scientific network dedicated to child health. Neonatologists in India and South Africa also contributed to the paper.
The paper calls for urgent action to ensure that newborns have access to appropriate antibiotics. Despite an increase in the proportion of newborn deaths linked to antimicrobial resistance, very few antibiotics have been tested for their effectiveness in treating neonatal sepsis, where the body’s response to infection overwhelming and begins to damage itself.
“There is an urgent need to identify high priority antibiotics to understand which ones work best and safely in children, and then make them available where they are needed,” said Prof Sharland.
Read the full article summarised above from St George’s University London website, or read the paper for more information.
