American Council on Science and Health: The U.K. Plan: Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance
David Shlaes, member of the American Council on Science and Health Scientific Advisory Panel and president of Anti-Infectives Consulting, LLC, discusses the U.K.’s recently released five-year plan for addressing antimicrobial resistance, particularly the plan’s approach to addressing the “global failure to incentivize the development of new antimicrobials and alternative treatments.” Shlaes writes, “In their five-year plan, the U.K. seems to be saying that they will ‘test’ a model based on ‘value’ of a new medicine to the health care of the nation. The first question is, how can one test an incentive that will surely not be an incentive since it will be unlikely to provide for global value to health care. The second question is, how will they determine ‘value.’ And finally, where will the money come from? … Given the current urgency, I strongly believe that our default position for 2019 is to provide a market entry reward … Other approaches, such as the one being undertaken by the U.K., will take too much time but could inform the market entry reward at a later time” (1/31).