Statement by the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, at the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on antimicrobial resistance


The world faces tremendous challenges, so many of which are connected. Connected challenges require of course connected solutions.

And the new UK government is determined to renew relationships with allies, especially in the Global South, and to modernise our approach to development, rooted in a spirit of genuine partnership.

We cannot hope to achieve any of our development goals without being able to prevent global health threats like AMR which, unless we act, will take almost 40 million lives by 2050.

That is what we learnt from COVID, and we’re determined to play our role in addressing the lessons of the last pandemic.

Central to that will be tackling the injustice of inequitable access.

New UK-funded data shows that 92 million lives – mainly of course in Global South countries – will be lost by 2050 due to a lack of access to both health care and to antibiotics.

This is intolerable and it must not continue.

This ambitious Political Declaration shows that we can achieve so much when we work together

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Published 26 September 2024