Review of a decisive moment: the UN High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance
11.11.2024 - The UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) was held on 26 September 2024 at the UN Headquarters in New York. The FOPH was represented in the Swiss delegation led by Thomas Gürber, Deputy State Secretary at the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. This was the second time that leaders from around the world had met at this level to tackle the global threat of drug-resistant infections.
Since AMR knows no borders and no country can resolve this crisis alone, it is essential that AMR is one of the priorities on the global health agenda. This meeting provided a key opportunity for heads of states to take collective action against AMR, which threatens global health, food security, economic stability and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.
A Political Declaration, the result of extended negotiations, was adopted at the meeting. It includes in particular a target to reduce the estimated 4.95 million deaths associated with bacterial AMR annually by 10% by 2030. The declaration calls for the establishment of an independent panel for evidence for action against AMR. It also recognises the benefits of public-private partnerships in the development of and access to antimicrobials.
Through its efforts in this area – in particular, the new national One Health Action Plan 2024–2027 of the Swiss Strategy on Antibiotic Resistance (StAR) – Switzerland is committed to reducing the emergence and spread of AMR and to supporting the research, development and availability of new antibiotics and diagnostic tools.
At the High-Level Meeting, Switzerland emphasised that AMR represents one of the greatest challenges facing health systems in the 21st century. It is thus now essential not only to make sufficiently ambitious commitments to respond to the urgency of this silent health crisis, but also to ensure that these political commitments are followed by concrete implementation measures at the national level.