Another global health crisis is gaining momentum. We need to be prepared.

A global health emergency is well underway — and we’re dangerously unprepared to contain it.

Drug-resistant infections are outsmarting our medical defenses, opening a widening gap between rapidly evolving superbugs and a dwindling antibiotic pipeline — a gap that puts millions of lives at risk.

Roughly one in six bacterial infections is now resistant to antibiotics. And a major analysis published in The Lancet estimates that antibiotic resistance will contribute to nearly 170 million deaths worldwide within the next 25 years.

We know how to reverse this trajectory: by developing new antimicrobials. Yet experts warn that research and development in the field is sorely lacking. Of the 90 antibiotics in development in 2024, just five are effective against one of the World Health Organization’s “critical priority” pathogens — which cause the hardest-to-treat infections. The need to kickstart innovation has never been more urgent.

Antimicrobial resistance occurs when dangerous microbes — like bacteria and fungi — stop responding to the medicines we have to treat them. Antibiotics revolutionized medicine, saving lives by treating infections. Without effective ones, routine procedures like knee surgery and cesarean sections would pose deadly risks. Drug-resistant bacteria already claim more than a million lives each year worldwide.

This growing crisis alarms me not only as a health care policy professional but as a patient and as a citizen. This health........

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