What we must do to avert antibiotic catastrophe | Letters

Letters from Vickie Hawkins of Mi(C)decins Sans Frontieres UK, Margaret Batty of WaterAid, Professor Stuart Reid of the Royal Veterinary College and two others

Jim O'Neill's report has rightly brought into focus the urgent need to finance and develop new antibiotics (Radical plan to halt scourge of drug resistance, 19 May). But what about the tools that already exist?

We know that vaccinations dramatically reduce the number of infections taking hold in the first place. Jim O'Neill says that if every child was vaccinated against pneumonia, it would potentially avert 11.4 million days of antibiotic use per year in children under five. What his report doesn't do is join the dots and recommend that the companies that already produce these life-saving vaccines lower the price to improve coverage rates.

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