Meeting the challenge of superbugs with a subscription service

The Radio National Hour · Feb 19, 2026 · 55m

Around the world infections once easily treated are becoming harder — sometimes impossible — to treat, often necessitating drastic surgical interventions. In Australia 100 die from antibiotic resistant superbugs every week and mortality rates are growing around the world, prompting an urgent rethink of how the miracle drugs are dispensed. Dame Sally Davis, the UK’s Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance has come up with a novel subscription based model to encourage big pharma to create new types of antibiotics. Australia’s Iranian diaspora have sounded the alarm over the granting of…