Antimicrobial Resistance Initiative

Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats to human health. Common bacterial infections that were once easy to treat are increasingly resistant to our current arsenal of drugs. Worldwide, an estimated 700,000 people die from resistant infections each year. The single greatest cause of this resistance is inappropriate antibiotic use.

The Antimicrobial Resistance Initiative addresses the underlying clinical, behavioral, and biological causes of this crisis by accelerating the development of rapid diagnostic tests to guide treatment of bacterial infection within hours rather than days; by changing the way clinicians prescribe antibiotics through dissemination of information about their appropriate use; and by using genetic analysis and computational modeling to elucidate how resistant infections emerge and spread in people and animals, thereby informing policies designed to control the spread of resistant infections.