Geneva, April 12 2022 – Commenting on the publication of draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on antimicrobial drugs to become available as part of the UK’s innovative ‘subscription-type’ payment model, Thomas Cueni, IFPMA Director-General, said:
“We welcome the results of the UK work to reward the full value that antibiotics deliver. Antibiotic resistance causes more than 1.2m deaths per year and investment into novel antibiotics that can beat resistance is urgently needed. The need for new incentives that reward the value of new antibiotics has been recognised by many governments, but the lack of a way to work out the value has hindered progress globally. While the UK model requires further work to quantify value from the ‘STEDI’ criteria, it is a really important step. But AMR is a global problem and all leading governments need to play their part in combatting it. The biopharmaceutical industry committed to invest nearly USD 1 billion into the AMR Action Fund to bridge the funding gap while permanent incentives are developed. We therefore call on the other leading governments, including G7 and G20, to put all efforts into progressing their own incentive models so that sufficient global scale is achieved that will attract the necessary investment in R&D. Other countries’ subscription models can build on the UK’s work to ensure their own valuation methodologies capture the antibiotics’ value from STEDI.”
Given the unique challenges and dynamics of the antibiotics market, unique measures are needed to establish an economic environment that will incentivize sufficient long-term investment into antibiotic R&D. IFPMA calls on all countries to enact policies that drive long-term investments in innovative antibiotics, throughout the discovery, development, and product lifecycle.