Russian developers of new antibiotics will be subsidized by the government

More than half of antibiotics sold in Russia are manufactured locally, said the Deputy Minister of industry and Trade of Russia Sergey Tsyb at the meeting of the Expert Council on Health Care under the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy.

According to the official, today, Russian companies are actively investing and working on new generation antibiotics. The Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade said that the development of new antibiotics is a priority project for the Ministry.

“We will develop our own competencies and our own manufacturing,” promised Mr. Tsyb to participants of the Expert Council meeting.

To speed up the production of new drugs, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade will provide subsidies to developers.

According to Lyudmila Kozlova, Deputy Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy, the uncontrolled use of antimicrobials in health care, veterinary medicine and agriculture leads to the emergence of antibiotic resistance.

If the issue of antibiotic resistance is not addressed in the near future, then, by 2050, new strains of microorganisms may cause ten million deaths a year worldwide. For comparison, cancer, which is called the “plague of the 21st century,” causes two million deaths a year.