Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial Resistance launches £1 million prize competition

The Trinity Challenge, founded by the Master Dame Sally Davies, has launched a £1 million prize competition to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in low- and middle-income countries.

The challenge launches during World AMR Awareness Week 2023. The World Health Organization predicts that by 2050 AMR will result in 10 million additional deaths a year if strategies are not implemented now to prevent drug resistance.

Dame Sally Davies, who is UK Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance, and Chair of the Trinity Challenge, said:

The number of deaths caused by antibiotic-resistant infections has already risen to outstrip many other significant global health threats including malaria, HIV and breast cancer. There is a critical need to act now to safeguard the effectiveness of modern medicine as we know it.

So much of our current data on antimicrobial resistance is from high-income countries, so we are not well equipped for what is truly a global struggle.

We are calling for submissions focussed on low- and middle-income countries who suffer the greatest burden of disease, and who are likely to have some of the best insights. I am optimistic that The Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial Resistance will empower teams to collect new data and develop tools and solutions to help turn the tide on antimicrobial resistance.

The Trinity Challenge encourages novel solutions from innovators and researchers across a wide range of sectors aimed at improving understanding of AMR and mitigating its impact on human, animal and environmental health.

Solutions might include: developing new tools to capture data in community settings; combining citizen-related data (such as climate, mobility, and health) with other data sets in novel ways; providing new ways to harness data to implement action and policy change.

Submissions should be shared via www.thetrinitychallenge.org by 29 February 2024.

Professor Marc Mendelson, Director of the Trinity Challenge, sees untreatable bacterial infections in his own practice increasingly often, which could lead to the death of patients or extraordinary measures, such as amputation, to save lives. ‘This has not been needed since before the advent of antibiotics, and marks a watershed moment,’ he said.

Modern medicine (including surgery, cancer care, childbirth, and the treatment and prevention of everyday infections), and our food production systems all rely on functioning antibiotics. This Challenge will bring the best and brightest minds across sectors to share their ideas that will help fill the gaps in our knowledge and ultimately help protect the power of antibiotics.

The Trinity Challenge was launched in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which highlighted a global need to be better prepared to tackle healthcare emergencies.