According to the leading public health experts, there is an urgent need to develop antibiotics for newborn babies. The latest report published in the World Health Organization’s bulletin in December revealed that more than 2.3 million newborn infants die of severe bacterial infections each year, along with an increasing number of infants who are becoming resistant to currently used antibiotics.

The paper was co-authored by experts in the field of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) who are working at prestigious institutions like the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). In the paper, the experts noted that severe bacterial infection remained one of the top concerns even after the decline in the number of deaths of children under the age of 5 due to preventable diseases.

The experts also highlighted the importance of collaborative antibiotic development and access networks, particularly targeting newborns. They cited the collaboration of GARDP, Penta-Child Health Research, SGUL, and other partners as an example of success. They pointed out that this has yielded large-scale results based on the observational study of 3,200 babies with neonatal sepsis across 19 hospitals in 11 countries.

Additionally, the report also raised concern about the lack of dosing information on the labels of the drugs. The experts pointed out that more than 40 antibiotics have been approved since the 2000s; however, only four of them have dosing information for infants on their labels.