[From Politico] The other coming human catastrophe is growing resistance to antibiotics. It could be the “climate change moment” for a health crisis that doesn’t make for good soundbites or news clips.

Health officials say the world is finally taking notice of how life-saving antibiotics are losing their value as bacteria evolve to resist the drugs — a phenomena that already kills 700,000 patients a year. Their latest evidence is a full-day meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, where heads of state for 193 governments rich and poor formally adopted a declaration calling the spread of bugs resistant to antibiotics the “greatest and most urgent global risk.” It’s only the fourth time a health issue has risen to the General Assembly level, after AIDS, chronic diseases and Ebola. The AIDS meeting led to creation of a Global Fund that has doled out billions for new treatments for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

The turn in the spotlight will not immediately end the political and regulatory inertia to address the complex problem in many of those countries. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Congress could consider reining in antibiotic use, especially in agriculture, where livestock consume as much as 80 percent of the manufactured drugs, for example. But advocates doubt that lawmakers, who have stalled for weeks on Zika legislation, will push for sweeping changes any time soon.

“I have a déjà vu with climate change. We had momentum in 2005 and it took a decade” to actually move to action, said Nina Renshaw, secretary general of the European Public Health Association, referring to the Paris agreement reached in December.

There’s one major difference.

“We don’t have a decade” to address antimicrobial resistance, she said. (Continue reading)