Health prevention through water resilience

We can’t win the battle against antibiotic resistance without acting on the water, sanitation and hygiene crisis in healthcare facilities now. Antibiotics are essential to modern healthcare. Without effective antibiotics, premature babies would not survive. Cancer chemotherapy, organ transplants and joint replacement surgery would be impossible.

However, the overuse of antibiotics can lead to the spread of bacteria that have developed resistance to the antibiotics they have encountered – meaning they can no longer kill them. This is a major threat to global health. Resistance to antibiotics and other drugs designed to kill infections has already contributed to at least 5 million deaths a year, 1 more than HIV, malaria and breast cancer individually. The spread of resistant infections is particularly prevalent in poorer countries and the lack of adequate water, sanitation and hygiene in many healthcare facilities in least developed countries is a major factor driving this.

When clinics and hospitals lack water supply or handwashing facilities, midwives, for example, can’t wash their hands between patients and don’t have enough water for safe births – putting new mothers and their newborn babies at risk. Investing in these basic services in healthcare facilities decreases the demand for antibiotics, breaks the chain of infection and the opportunity for a resistant infection to become dominant.

A 2016 World Bank report shows that a highcase scenario of AMR could push up to 28 million people, mostly in developing countries, into poverty by 2050. Global increases in healthcare costs may range from $300 billion to more than $1 trillion per year by 2050. And the wider economic costs could be as high as $100 trillion by 2050.

A lack of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in healthcare facilities not only drives the spread of resistant infections by exposing patients and health workers but also by encouraging the overuse of antibiotics to prevent and treat infections. The first step in reducing the need for antibiotics is to get the basics of prevention right.

Yet, half of the world’s healthcare facilities do not have basic hand hygiene services – rising to two thirds across the 46 least developed countries. Through this panel discussion, we aim to demonstrate why getting right the basics of prevention through WASH is crucial to the EU’s fight against AMR.