Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the silent pandemic, senior superintending veterinary inspector at the Department of Agriculture Caroline Garvan has said.

Speaking at an Animal Health Ireland conference in Kilkenny this week, Garvan highlighted the importance of 'One Health', adding that 70% of the diseases that occur in people are going to come from animals.

AMR matters to everybody, it matters if "you never saw a cow in your life", it is a societal issue, Garvan argued.

"One Health is where we are going now as a Government and a society. We can't work in isolation - COVID probably emphasised that - the Department of Health can't work without engaging with the Department of Agriculture.

"One Health matters for everybody and the end goal at a global level is that we have better health in people, in our animals and in our general ecosystem. It acknowledges how co-dependent human, animal and environmental health are on each other," she said.

AMR, Garvan said, is driven by people and is a people problem - people prescribe, people use and people give them [antibiotics] to animals.

"COVID-19 came at us like a racing car, it came out of the blue and we were in the middle of a global pandemic. AMR doesn't get the same press, but it is slowly being recognised as the silent pandemic.

"Essentially, we have a case where we just can't treat bacterial disease and the WHO [World Health Organisation] is ranking AMR in the top 10 global health treats," Garvan said.

Citing a UK report from 2016, Garvan said that by 2050 there would be 10m people dying globally from resistant infections - greater than the number dying from cancer.

In 2019, 4.95m deaths were associated with drug-resistant infection (20% were children).

Progress

Ireland's animal health sector has made a progressive reduction in antibiotic use since 2020, which is now down 30% from 2018 levels.

"We're making huge progress and this is a real message - when we meet human health colleagues, we can sell that the animal health sector takes AMR seriously and it is really working hard to address it," she said.

Since 2022, the sales of dry cow tubes and lactating tubes have seen a big drop off, Garvan said, highlighting how farmers are moving away from the blanket use of dry cow tubes at drying off.