Combating AMR requires multi-pronged approach

 Architects, design teams, construction companies, and manufacturers; the skills of you all are required in the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Surely – such personnel might think – this is a mistake? Is this indeed not the province of pharmaceutical companies, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and veterinarians? While the latter professionals undoubtedly have an important role, the skills of all the stakeholders involved in the construction and manufacturing industry are required. In this article we seek to explain why and how such professionals’ expertise is required, and the opportunities available, not just in the UK market, but globally, as this is a worldwide issue.

 For those who embrace the challenge there is the potential to save and improve many more lives than any healthcare professional can achieve in their entire career, and – simultaneously – the size of the financial market for solutions is immense. The healthcare built environment has been placed at the forefront of the 2024 UK 5-year national action plan (NAP) to tackle AMR.¹

There are few people alive who remember the pre antibiotic era, when individuals would go into hospital with trivial complaints and frequently not survive due to a complicating infection. The advent of effective antibiotics revolutionised the management of infectious diseases; the wards housing patients with untreatable infections disappeared, as these diseases could now be simply treated at an early stage with a pill, out in the community. However, the honeymoon period is over. We are now seeing bacteria resistant to last-line antibiotics, and patients with infections that are untreatable. Soon we will find ourselves in the post-antibiotic era.