Almost 3,000 clinicians and scientists have already signed Antibiotic Action’s petition highlighting its grave concerns over the lack of effective, modern antibiotics – and there is another week to go before it will be delivered to 10 Downing Street next Wednesday after an event which is being held in parliament to raise awareness about the ticking time bomb the government and NHS faces unless urgent action is taken.

The petition asks:

1. What opportunities exist to safely streamline and accelerate the licensing processes for new antibiotic agents.
2. How to address and incentivise the commercial challenges faced by industry in developing and bringing new antibiotics to the marketplace.
3. Initiatives to that will encourage greater partnership working between pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies as well as academia in the UK in order to maximise the conversion of discovered candidate molecules into licensed antibiotics available for use on the NHS.

To remind you how important new antibiotics are for patients, please do listen to Sharon’s story on video, which she describes as follows:

My name is Sharon, I’m 30 years old and I have Cystic Fibrosis (CF). CF affects my lungs by producing too much mucus. This means I am very susceptible to infections. Because CF is incurable, my doctors and I are totally reliant on antibiotics to try and minimise both the number and severity of chest infections I have.

Resistance is always a concern for my hospital team and we decide what treatment I should have depending on what drugs I am resistant to, at any one time. As there are only a limited number of useful antibiotics I have quite often been prescribed a treatment that I have been resistant to as there have been no other treatment options available to me and I?m too ill to not try anything at all. This has to change.

Currently I am on three antibiotics daily, as well as needing four intravenous antibiotic treatments a year. I also regularly have two weekly courses of additional oral antibiotics about 6 times a year. I am very dependent on antibiotics and put simply, without them, my lungs would have become overwhelmed by chest infections many years ago and I doubt I would be here now.

If you have a story to share about the vital role of antibiotics, we would love to hear it.

And please don’t forget, you can sign our petition here.

UPDATE 2 November: Our 3,000th signature signed in at 12.42 today!