AMR Awareness Week 2025 Part 2: The quiet advance of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

The aim of the global AMR Awareness Week is to raise public awareness of antibiotic (antimicrobial) resistance and to promote solutions to the problem. This blog series provides an insight into the role of research-based pharmaceutical companies in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

A world without antibiotics

Antibiotics are among the greatest medical achievements in human history. They have made it possible to conquer infectious diseases that used to be fatal.

In 1950, around 7% of all deaths in Germany were due to infectious diseases. In 2023, thanks to modern antibiotics, the figure was just 0.02%. Antibiotics have not only saved and prolonged countless lives, but have also enabled progress in many other areas. Antibiotics have also played a part in increasing life expectancy by 23 years. A milestone!

But this success is in jeopardy. More and more bacteria are developing resistance to existing active substances. Diseases that seemed to have all but disappeared are returning. At the same time, the development of new antibiotics is complex, expensive and risky: around 97% of all research projects fail before a drug reaches the market.

Pharmaceutical companies invest enormous sums of money and years of intense research, but the economic incentive remains low, as new antibiotics should be used as sparingly as possible to delay the development of resistance.

If action is not taken now, 21st-century medicine risks falling back to 20th-century levels. Routine procedures could become life-threatening, and infections that we treat today with a pill could once again turn fatal.

That is why we urgently need political and economic incentives to promote research and development. This is the only way to ensure that future generations can also count on effective antibiotics.

Why does Switzerland lack new antibiotics that have long been available in other countries?

The development of new antibiotics is expensive and risky: 97% of projects fail. In addition, new antibiotics may only be used in a targeted manner to prevent resistance.

To counterbalance the risks associated with antibiotics research and the sparing use of antibiotics, countries such as the US, the UK and Sweden use targeted market incentives to promote new antibiotics.

Between 2010 and 2020, up to 17 new antibacterial substances were quickly approved and made available to patients in those countries. In Switzerland, only 6 out of 18 new substances were approved – with a delay of more than 2.5 years. It shows, that action is urgently  needed.

Click here for part 1 of the blog series