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Reading 1/2:
Passage 1
1. A Netflix-style scheme to fund new antibiotics through a subscription-where a health service pays drug companies a set annual fee, regardless of how many doses are used-will start next year in England. The approach tackles a key element of the antibiotic resistance crisis: that few new drugs are being developed, while existing ones are failing.
2. The field is currently unprofitable for pharmaceutical firms because when new antibiotics reach the clinic, health services use them sparingly, to slow the spread of bacterial resistance.
Under the new scheme, manufacturers Pfizer and Japanese firm Shionogi will receive fixed payments from England's National Health Service (NHS England) from April for two recently
launched antibiotics, called Zavicefta and Fetcroja, respectively.
3. The amount to be paid hasn't yet been announced, but the UK government has previously said it could be as much as £10 million a year. "It doesn't matter if we use no pills, one pill or 10.000 pills, says Colin Garner at Antibiotic Research UK, a charity that wasn't involved in the scheme. "[Funding] is not at all related to the number of antibiotics used."
4. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics, used to treat conditions such as pneumonia, sepsis, and wound infections, is seen as one of the biggest threats to public health. Resistant microbes have become more common as antibiotic use has increased, raising the prospect that simple infections will become untreatable, and common operations, cancer treatments and stays in intensive care units (ICUs) will be far riskier.
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5. For years, various schemes have been debated to try to provide an incentive for companies to do research and development in this field. NHS England's subscription model is the first designed explicitly to reimburse firms with an amount that reflects an antibiotic's overall value to a health service, even if it is kept as a medicine of last resort and not used very much.
6. "If you have a patient in hospital with a resistant organism, it can totally disable an entire ICU," said Colm Leonard, a clinical advisor for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). speaking at a recent conference held by the UK Royal Society of Medicine.
7. NICE has recently completed an assessment of Zavicefta and Fetcroja for the purpose of the subscription model. Zavicefta is a combination of two drugs for treating conditions such as pneumonia and urinary tract infections. Fetcroja is aimed at infections caused by a hard-to treat group of microbes called aerobic Gram-negative bacteria. The drugs are supposed to be prescribed only if the infection fails to respond to other antibiotics.
8. The US Senate is considering a similar plan to NHS England, set out in a bipartisan bill called the Pasteur Act, through which the US government would pay annual sums for new antibiotics based on their novelty and clinical value. "That would be a game changer," Sally Davies, former chief medical officer for England, said at the conference.
9. Sweden has also begun trialing a scheme that offers five antibiotic manufacturers minimum guaranteed payments for their drugs. This is designed to encourage firms to make existing
antibiotics available in Sweden, because the country uses less antibiotics per head than similar high-income countries.
1) Which of the following statements is TRUE about the use of Zavicefta and Fetcroja?
