9 October 2024 

Antimicrobial resistance is a serious issue that needs urgent attention, but withholding access is not the answer – it simply harms people living in low- and middle-income countries.

For decades the restricted use of antibiotics has been widely encouraged as a way of slowing down drug resistance. The rationale is that this is necessary to protect the lives of people in the future, because limiting exposure to these drugs will delay the time it takes for bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics, thereby prolonging their effectiveness. However, while good antibiotic stewardship continues to remain critical, it has overshadowed the importance of people getting access to the antibiotics they need today, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where the disease burden is the greatest, with more people now dying from a lack of access to antibiotics than from drug-resistant infections.