AMR Alliance Japan (Secretariat: Health and Global Policy Institute) has released a new report, “Incentivizing Resilience: Accelerating Efforts to Promote the Research and Development Needed to Save the World from the Next Pandemic.” This report is based on discussion at an expert roundtable held on August 26, 2021 to explore the difficulties around promoting the research and development of medical countermeasures – specifically antimicrobials, vaccines, and diagnostics – as a means of dealing with future public health emergencies. The meeting focused particularly on the health crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which is estimated to cause 8,000 deaths per year in Japan and may potentially cause 10 million deaths worldwide annually if strong countermeasures are not taken.

At the August roundtable, experts discussed medical countermeasures, the incentives needed to advance medical countermeasures development, and how those incentives might be realized. Key takeaways were as follows.

1. COVID-19 has reminded the world of the impact that pandemics can have and that we must prepare regularly for infectious disease crises
2. New incentives and market-oriented policy reforms are necessary to better spur the development of the medical countermeasures needed to combat future infectious disease risks
3. Policies are already in place across the world that could support incentives and reforms – but greater support is needed to connect these policies together in a way that ensures a healthy development environment.
4. Infectious diseases are a global problem, and countermeasures are global public goods; countries should consider a ‘fair-share’ approach and global collaboration on funding toward the development of medical countermeasures

For further information, please see the report below.