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Nowadays, bringing a new antibiotic to the market is a difficult and costly task as the market is broken. Big pharmaceutical compagnies have left the business as the price they can get from antibiotics sales are too low to support their development costs. Only small biotechnology firms are presently trying to produce antibiotics. This situation can partly be explained by the short useful life of the products as bacteria evolve and adapt to new molecules and the antibiotic stewardship limits the deployment of new antibiotics. Incentives are needed to help small firms to develop and market antibiotics to help fight resistance, but also to deal with shortages. The shortages observed globally lead to an increase in antibiotic resistance as patients are prescribed suboptimal antibiotics, broader spectrum antibiotics and antibiotics higher in the AWaRe classification. Shortages also raise the sales of substandard and falsified antibiotics.

Links:  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02418-x

https://www.reactgroup.org/news-and-views/news-and-opinions/year-2020/shortages-and-amr-why-should-we-care-4-consequences-of-antibiotic-shortages/