Race to Save Lives

Given the coronavirus pandemic currently affecting nations globally, it is appropriate to take stock of the impact of infections on humanity during this year’s International Infection Prevention Week. Not since the Spanish Flu has so much attention been given to infection and transmission rates. With second waves hitting OECD nations, the race to save lives continues.

As of October 12, 2020, more than one million people have died solely due to the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. To put this death toll further into perspective, the New York Times tells us that the number of COVID-19 deaths has already exceeded deaths from H.I.V., malaria, influenza and cholera combined over the past 10 months. With inadequate therapies to treat or prevent COVID-19, nations around the world are left struggling to help and protect their people as well as their devastated economies. The financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic is hard to imagine but has been estimated to cost US$16 trillion alone for the United States. Billions of dollars are now being directed towards new vaccines in the race to save lives from the coronavirus – but will these efforts be enough, and will these solutions come in time to prevent third and fourth waves of high infection and mortality rates or help deal with significant mutations in the coronavirus? The stakes indeed are high.

The lessons that have come to light suggest that better preparedness, faster responses, improved information sharing, greater PPE supplies and more multinational (and intranational) collaborations were needed. It is not lost on us that we could have, and should have, done a better job given global scientific expertise and lessons learned from historical experiences. We could have, and should have, done a better job for the under-developed nations; sadly, the suffering and losses felt by some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged continue to be grossly under-reported.  The true impact of the coronavirus is still many years away from being understood.  I sincerely hope that humanity will take the opportunity to learn from these lessons and implement – and commit to – better global response plans for all nations and not just our own.

In 2016, the UK’s O’Neill Report gave us a dire warning, predicting that 10 million people per year would die from drug resistant infections by 2050, up from 700,000 annual global deaths in 2016. This number is about 7 times the current known death rate from COVID-19. Can our societies cope with 10 million antimicrobial resistance (AMR) related deaths annually?  It is critical that we all do more to get behind infection prevention given the large and growing number of people impacted by drug-resistant infections and the additional threat of more frequent pandemics. 

The quest to find simple solutions to complex infections is our mission at Ondine Biomedical, and we hope that more will join in with infection prevention efforts to support the race to save lives.

Carolyn Cross, CEO/Chairman of Ondine Biomedical. Passionate Resistance Fighter.