New WHO list ranks threatening superbugs

The World Health Organization has drawn up a list of the drug-resistant bacteria that pose the biggest threat to human health ahead of a G20 meeting in Germany.

Aiming to focus the minds of governments on finding new antibiotics to fight hard-to-treat infections, the top of the list contains 12 families of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to human health, with gram-negative bugs, such as E. coli, which can cause lethal bloodstream infections and pneumonia in frail hospital patients, topping the list.

The WHO have raised the dangerous possibility that pharmaceutical companies will develop only ‘the low-hanging fruit’, being treatments that are profitable and easy to make.Instead, it warns that the focus should be on clinical need instead.

Experts drew up the list by looking at the current level of drug resistance, global death rates, prevalence of the infections in communities and the burden the diseases cause on health systems.

Dr Marie-Paule Kieny said: “This list is a new tool to ensure R&D responds to urgent public health needs. Antibiotic resistance is growing, and we are fast running out of treatment options. If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time.”