Your Excellency Philemon Yang, President of the General Assembly, I would like to join other speakers in congratulating you on your election.
Your Excellency Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley,
Your Excellency Robert Rae, President of ECOSOC,
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed,
Fellow quadripartite Principals,
AMR survivors and civil society partners,
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
Let me begin by expressing my deep gratitude to Prime Minister Mottley of Barbados for her leadership on antimicrobial resistance, and on global health more generally.
Thank you, Your Excellency, for everything you have done to elevate this critical health issue on the global agenda. Please join me in thanking her.
Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize for his accidental discovery of penicillin almost 100 years ago.
But he also knew about the threat of antimicrobial resistance, and warned the world about it.
In his Nobel lecture in 1945, Fleming said, “It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them.”
If he were here today, he would probably say, “I told you so.”
AMR is one of the most pressing threats to health and development of our time.
AMR could reverse decades of medical progress, making common infections, routine surgeries, cancer treatment and organ transplants far riskier and even life-threatening.
This is not a hypothetical risk for the future. It’s here and now.
In 2019 alone, 1.3 million deaths were directly attributable to antibiotic-resistant infections.
Vulnerable populations, particularly children, are disproportionately affected.
No country is immune to this threat, but low- and middle-income countries bear the greatest burden.
Despite the rapid spread of resistance, we are facing an alarmingly dry pipeline for new antibiotics.
The irony of AMR is that it’s fuelled by the overuse of antibiotics;
And yet more people die from lack of access to antibiotics.
The threat of AMR cuts across the health of humans, animals, agriculture and our environment.
And so must its solution. That’s why WHO, FAO, WOAH and UNEP are working together closely in the Quadripartite, with a One Health approach.
Since the first high-level meeting on AMR in 2016, we have made progress.
We have strengthened global governance, and most countries have developed and are implementing national action plans to tackle AMR.
But more work and money are needed to stay ahead of this growing threat. Only 11% of countries have allocated budget to implement their plans.
I commend Member States for the political declaration you have approved today, the clear commitments you have made, and the confidence you have placed in WHO and the Quadripartite.
WHO welcomes the target you have set to reduce global deaths associated with bacterial AMR by 10% by 2030.
We also welcome the request to formalize the Quadripartite Joint Secretariat on AMR;
And we look forward to establishing an Independent Panel on Evidence for Action against AMR by next year, and to updating the Global Action Plan on AMR by 2026.
I urge all Member States to take immediate action on the commitments you have made today. WHO stands ready to support you.
Before I close I would like to thank Ambassador Francois Jackman and Ambassador Vanessa Frazier, for their leadership in the declaration.
Together, we can protect these powerful medicines and the people whose lives depend on them, now and in the future.
I thank you.