Imagine a world where a simple cut could be a death sentence; where routine surgeries become impossible, and common infections transform into untreatable nightmares. This isn’t science fiction — it’s the looming reality of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, a silent global health emergency that threatens to unravel decades of medical progress.
As drug-resistant infections claim nearly 4.7 million lives annually and are projected to kill 70% more people by 2050, the global health community is pinning its hopes on an unprecedented intervention: the Independent Panel on Evidence for Action against Antimicrobial Resistance, or IPEA. Modeled loosely on the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, this new body represents a critical inflection point in humanity’s most urgent public health challenge.
IPEA will help to consolidate scientific evidence to inform policymakers and raise awareness about the rise and spread of drug-resistant infections. Unlike climate change debates of the past, there’s a rare consensus about AMR. Scientists, policymakers, and health experts agree on the problem’s severity and the broad strokes of its solution.