WHO: Improving vaccination could reduce antibiotic use by 2.5 billion doses per year

Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites lose their ability to respond to antimicrobial drugs, making patients sicker and increasing their risk of death, while also spreading infections that are difficult to treat. The root cause of this problem is the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial drugs. At the same time, large numbers of people worldwide still do not have access to necessary treatments. It is estimated that antimicrobial resistance causes up to 5 million deaths each year.

Vaccines are seen as a powerful weapon in combating antimicrobial resistance. They can prevent infections, reduce the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials, and thus slow the emergence and spread of resistant pathogens.

The report states that existing vaccines, such as those for pneumococcus, Haemophilus influenzae and typhoid, could prevent approximately 106,000 deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance each year. If new vaccines for tuberculosis and Klebsiella pneumoniae were developed and rolled out globally, an estimated 543,000 deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance could be prevented each year. Although new tuberculosis vaccines are in clinical trials, the development of Klebsiella pneumoniae vaccines is still in its early stages.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed out that to combat antimicrobial resistance, we must first prevent infection, and vaccines are a powerful weapon to achieve this goal. Prevention is better than cure, and increasing the accessibility of existing vaccines and accelerating the development of new vaccines for major diseases such as tuberculosis are crucial to saving lives and reversing the situation of antimicrobial resistance.

Vaccines are key to preventing infection

The report shows that if 90% of children and the elderly worldwide are vaccinated against pneumococcal disease, 33 million doses of antibiotics will be saved; if typhoid vaccine is accelerated in high-risk countries, 45 million doses will be saved; malaria vaccine (against Plasmodium falciparum) is expected to save up to 25 million doses, which are often misused to treat malaria. Once a tuberculosis vaccine is successfully developed, it is estimated that 1.2 billion to 1.9 billion doses of antibiotics will be saved each year, accounting for nearly 20% of the total amount of antibiotics used for the diseases assessed in the report.

Vaccines can significantly reduce economic costs of fighting