The battle against antibiotic resistance is often portrayed as a race between pharmaceutical science and bacterial evolution. Yet health experts warn that prevention is better than cure — and the potential of vaccines in combating drug-resistant infections is often overlooked.
Of the six bacteria that are responsible for the most deaths linked to drug-resistance — a combined 929,000 fatalities per year — there is a licensed vaccine for just one: Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause pneumonia and other illnesses.
“Even though those of us in the field appreciate that vaccines are really the way to go in terms of dealing with [antibiotic resistance], this isn’t actually even appreciated properly in the science community at large,” says Professor Calman MacLennan, an Oxford university immunologist who runs BactiVac, a global bacterial vaccinology network.