World Antimicrobial Awareness Week: OUTBREAK Report On Superbugs

Happy bonus episode listeners! To mark World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, the MTPConnect podcast team caught up with OUTBREAK Managing Director & Co-founder Associate Professor Branwen Morgan from the University of Technology Sydney and Distinguished Professor Antoine van Oijen, who is OUTBREAK’s Deputy Managing Director and Director of Health Programs from the University of Wollongong, to talk about their new economic report on the impact of antimicrobial resistance in Australia released this week which shines a light on the multi-million dollar cost of drug-resistant infections and connects the overuse and misuse of antibiotics to the health and economic impact of a single disease. OUTBREAK is a national consortium whose analysis used big data and Artificial Intelligence to highlight how urinary tract infections (UTIs) are becoming more persistent and harder to treat, resulting in more people being admitted to hospital where they require longer stays and more costly medicines. Each year UTIs alone lead to 2.5 million GP appointments, 100K emergency visits and 75K hospital stays!. OUTBREAK is a member of MTPConnect’s AAMRNet, Australia’s first Antimicrobial Resistance Network launched in October 2020. The report is available to download at OUTBREAK Project’s website: https://outbreakproject.com.au/antimicrobial-resistance-publications/utis-economic-report/. For more information on AMR, follow Twitter for updates at @AAMRNet_ and @OneHealthAU.