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Cormac O Grada Public Lecture: "Cast Back into the Dark Ages of Medicine? The Challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance"

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Cormac O Grada Public Lecture: "Cast Back into the Dark Ages of Medicine? The Challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance"

Cormac Ó Gráda from the University College Dublin will be delivering a public lecture at The University of Warwick:

Tuesday 28th April 2015
6:00pm — 7:15pm
Room: S2.79 Economics Dept., Social Sciences, University of Warwick (directions)

  • With the virtual eradication of most infectious diseases, life expectancy in the UK and other high-income countries has doubled in the last century or so.
  • The gains in poor countries have been smaller, but still significant.

  • The welfare gains associated with the control of infection have been huge.

  • Most of the increase in life expectancy preceded the antibiotics revolution

  • Public health measures have been essential to the story of controlling infectious diseases.

  • The challenge of AMR needs to be set in historical context: though real, it does not have to mean a return to ‘the dark ages of medicine’.

  • Meeting the challenge requires a focus on both supply of antimicrobials (the ‘pipeline’) and the demand for them (consumption).

  • There is considerable scope for reducing consumption and thereby resistance.

  • Public health measures and health education can usefully reinforce measures to restrain consumption.

  • The pipeline is not as dry as usually claimed.