European Commission launches €1m prize for a diagnostic test to combat antibiotic resistance

Mar 2nd, 2015

A prize of €1 million will be awarded to the person or team that develops a rapid test to tell whether a patient needs to be treated with antibiotics or not, the European Commission announced today. The aim of the Horizon Prize for better use of antibiotics is to stop many patients from taking antibiotics needlessly, which is one of the main reasons for the rise of antimicrobial resistance. European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas said: “Growing resistance to antibiotics is one of the biggest challenges to public health today. We need to find new ways to prevent people from dying from infections that have been treatable for decades, until resistance rendered our drugs ineffective. We need to bring new classes of antibiotics to market and we need to take preventative measures to stop antibiotics being over-prescribed and over-used. Under Horizon 2020 we are continuing to help save lives and reduce the €1.5 billion in healthcare expenses and productivity losses the EU incurs each year from drug-resistant infections.” For more information read:

The full news alert

Website

Infographic