http://sdg.iisd.org/news/antibiotic-resistance-jeopardizes-sdg-achievement-warns-research-report/
28 February 2019: The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation is calling attention to the rise of antibiotic resistance as a “systems failure” in both health care and agriculture. In a research report co-published with the ReAct network, the Foundation highlights the relevance of this issue to poverty (SDG 1), food production (SDG 2), health (SDG 3), economic growth (SDG 8), inequality (SDG 10), and the environment (with specific reference to SDG 6 on water, SDG 14 on life below water and SDG 15 on life on land). The authors call for addressing antibiotic resistance when taking steps to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and undertaking national action plans on antimicrobial resistance.
The authors of the report titled, ‘When the Drugs Don’t Work – Antibiotic Resistance as a Global Development Problem,’ explain that antibiotic resistance is spreading through wastewater from hospitals and municipalities, open defecation, waste from animal farms, manure runoff from crop fields, discharge from aquaculture farms, and wastewater from pharmaceutical manufacturing plants. They note that current methods of wastewater treatment are not capable of removing antibiotics from water; thus, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals used in healthcare and animal husbandry contaminate the water flowing from farms, aquaculture ponds, health care facilities and other sources. Besides the implications for human and animal health, they warn, antibiotics have toxic effects on ecosystems, causing reductions in microbial biodiversity.
PHAGElogist 