14 May 2015: Plans have been made for a global research fund for drug firms to develop new antibiotics. The proposals were made in a report by a UK government-appointed review team, which is headed by economist Jim O’Neill. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) spoke to Sky News and BBC Radio London about the issue of funding for new antibiotics.
Sp
eaking to Sky News, RPS spokesperson Neal Patel said: “One of the things we’ve seen today from the Jim O’Neill report is that we want pharmaceutical companies to think a bit longer term in terms of where their investments go. So antibiotics are not only treatments for infection, they’re actually fantastic ways of covering people’s infection prevention when they’ve got conditions like cancer, where drug companies do invest a lot of money. So it is about the knock-on effect as well, and also the pharmaceutical industry needs to think about the fact that it does have a responsibility to
society and make sure it does produce medicines that society needs.”