Jim O'Neill will be speaking at WIRED Health 2016 on 29 April in London. From helping humans live longer to understanding the brain, WIRED Health will hear from the innovators transforming this critical sector.
The news that bacteria had started to become resistant to last-resort antibiotic colistin came as a blow to healthcare professionals at the end of 2015. The discovery means that certain bugs that cause gut, urinary and blood infections in humans can become "pan-resistant" and defeat all currently-available antibiotics.
"It's a huge problem and it's really concerning," Jim O'Neill, the former Goldman Sachs chief economist credited with coining the BRIC acronym (for Brazil, Russia, India and China), told WIRED UK.
The economist and current Commercial Secretary to the Treasury has now turned his attention to a new set of letters: AMR - antimicrobial resistance. "I can't think of any other global problems where there is a possibility that 10 million people will be dying each year by 2050," he says.
O'Neill, who will be speaking at WIRED Health 2016, was asked by David Cameron in July 2014 to head up the independent Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. Cameron wanted a chair from outside the scientific community to help translate the problem to a broader audience and accelerate action.