President Joe Biden is preparing to announce a $100 million research drive to fight deadly drug-resistant bacteria "superbugs."
Biden is expected to detail the effort Wednesday during a meeting in San Francisco with the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Reuters reported, citing a White House official.
The World Health Organization says antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development today.
"New resistance mechanisms are emerging and spreading globally, threatening our ability to treat common infectious diseases," the agency says. "A growing list of infections – such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning, gonorrhoea, and foodborne diseases – are becoming harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat as antibiotics become less effective."
More than a million people worldwide lose their lives each year due to infections resulting from bacteria resistant to antibiotics, according to WHO. In the United States, that number is over 35,000 annually.
Global health officials have repeatedly warned about the rise of antimicrobial-resistant microbes due to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages microorganisms to evolve into "superbugs."
The World Health Organization says new drugs are urgently needed to combat superbugs, but the clinical pipeline is dry with only a few dozen antibiotics in clinical development.
Details of Biden's plan weren't immediately available, but Reuters said the antimicrobial initiative will be led by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which was launched by the administration last year.