18 hours ago
Major UK project to tackle AMR closed by aid cuts
The Fleming Fund, a major British programme that helps tackle antimicrobial resistance in the developing world, has been forced to close because of the government's aid cuts, The Telegraph can reveal.
The £265 million programme – named after Alexander Fleming the British scientist who discovered penicillin – was established in 2015 in response to a landmark UK study which found resistant infections would kill 10 million people every globally year by 2050.
The fund was designed to tackle drug resistance at its source and support experts in hundreds of laboratories in developing countries that face the greatest threat from AMR.
Termed the 'silent pandemic', AMR is directly responsible for 1.27 million deaths every year as bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens evolve to evade modern medicine.
But it's not just a problem for the developing world – in England alone, 66,730 suffered from 'serious antibiotic resistant infections' in 2023.
There are an estimated 30,000 deaths in the UK every year and, for many others, it changes their lives.
Experts have repeatedly stressed that AMR does not respect borders – and often emerge in countries with less regulation surrounding antibiotic use both to treat illness and in agriculture.
'We are having to make choices that we don't want to have to make,' Baroness Chapman, the Minister of International Development, told the International Development Committee at an evidence session in parliament today.
Baroness Chapman, who became Minister after her predecessor Anneliese Dodds resigned, has become the chief hatchet woman for the aid budget.
Last month, she announced a 40 per cent cut in real terms of the UK's contribution to Gavi, the vaccine alliance which funds immunisations for half the world's children.
'We've had to make some really tough choices. But we've decided as a government that we want to invest in defence, because that's the world we are in,' she told The Telegraph at the time.
Ashley Dalton, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Prevention in the Department of Health and Social Care, said that although the funding for the Fleming Fund has ceased, the government will continue with its 'partnerships' forged under the programme.
It is currently unclear what this means.
The Telegraph has contacted the Department of Health and Social Care, who funds the Fleming Fund, for clarification.
