Antimicrobials: Drug Resistance
(asked on 11th March 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bethell on 26 February (HL1925), (1) whether they will provide a breakdown of how the £360 million invested in antimicrobial resistance research since 2014 was spent, (2) what assessment they have made of the outcomes from the investment in antimicrobial resistance to date, and (3) what is their strategy for incentivising the pharmaceutical industry to develop antibiotics.
The breakdown of the United Kingdom’s investment into antimicrobial resistance (AMR) research and development since 2014 is set out in the following table:
Investment amount | Item |
UK domestic investment | |
£46 million | UK Research and Innovation (UKRI): Cross-Research Council AMR initiative |
£10 million | Nesta: The Longitude Prize |
£20 million | National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) AMR-themed call |
Approximately £8 million | NIHR-funded Health Protection Research Units: Healthcare-Associated Infections and AMR |
£55 million | Department of Health and Social Care: AMR capital funding |
£4 million | Medical Research Council (MRC): Antimicrobial Target Discovery and Validation |
UK international investment/ official development assistance | |
£41 million | UKRI: Research Councils |
£8.8 million | NIHR: Global Health Research programme |
£12 million | Joint MRC/NIHR: 3-4 research consortia to identify the primary drivers of AMR in a global context. |
£60.5 million (initial investment £50 million)* | Department of Health and Social Care: Global AMR Innovation Fund (GAMRIF) |
Other investment | |
£107 million | Interdisciplinary AMR research (investments announced at United Nations General Assembly) |
Note:
*Through GAMRIF, push funding into AMR research in development for low-and-middle income countries has also been used to leverage approximately £41 million from other funders.
Independent research, commissioned and funded by the NIHR Policy Research Programme, has been conducted on the implementation of the UK five-year AMR Strategy 2013-18, including an assessment of research activity. This evaluation will become publicly available following independent peer review.
The UK is undertaking world-leading work on potential solutions that address pharmaceutical market failure by testing an innovative model for the evaluation and purchase of antimicrobials. For our work to have the full effect, we need other countries to offer similar incentives in their own domestic markets, alongside regional or global market incentives solutions. The UK has taken the lead in lobbying for tangible commitments on market incentives in the 2019 G20 Leaders’ declaration and is working with a number of like-minded countries to advocate for clear, next steps from all G20 members.