Topic:
Country: Russian Federation
Delegate Name: Nicole Schafer
Antibiotic or antimicrobial resistance is one of the major threats to population’s health and attempts to develop health technologies. This is when antibiotics developed throughout medical history, necessary for humans to fight deadly bacterial infections, such as penicillin and amoxicillin. Antibiotic resistance therefore means that the bacteria is slowly changing due to the wonderful effects of the antibiotic and as a result, finding ways to combat the antibiotics. Because of this, it is a huge crisis around the world. The WHO is also saying that technologies to counter antibiotic resistance are slowing down and there is a lack of innovation in the past couple years. This means every year, humans are getting more and more vulnerable to bacterial infections and there is not much that has been introduced to help that. The WHO hopes to put this as a priority in the future because this causes about 5 million deaths a year globally and will increase the schism of poverty and inequality, especially in developing nations where antibiotic resistance is so crucially important.
Antibiotic resistance is very prevalent in Russia so is a major concern for the people and government. They are collaborating with many international groups for the cause such as the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the The Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA). They participate in many helpful studies to understand antibiotic resistance much better and are establishing programs, guidelines and testing. There is a lack of regulation in our country and that is something we are trying to solve and help. There is a program inside of Russia called The Interregional Association for Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (IACMAC) and this consists of 48 different regions inside of Russia, trying to make people aware of the side effects of using too many antibiotics.
The Russian Federation believes in the push for finding new technologies for antimicrobial resistance, but wants to keep national sovereignty and not interfere with the rest of the countries and focus on its own problems of this issue. This issue is mirrored by the COVID-19 vaccine where the Russian Federation made their own and did not want to be part of the greater unification over the development of the COVID-19 vaccine.