Having warned that antimicrobial resistance is an increasingly serious threat to global public health, in 2015 the World Health Organization called on all countries to make joint efforts to tackle the problem by drawing up national action plans by 2017.

While antimicrobial resistance is a broad term - encompassing resistance to drugs to treat infections caused by parasites, viruses, and fungi - resistance to antibiotics used to treat infections caused by common bacteria is a major concern, since patients with infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria are generally at increased risk of worse clinical outcomes and death, and consume more healthcare resources than patients infected with the same bacteria that are not resistant.

An action plan to curb the overuse of antibiotics in China has long been overdue, given the fact that the country consumes half of the antibiotics worldwide. So the antimicrobial resistance plan released jointly by 14 central government departments on Thursday is to be welcomed, as effectively implementing it will reduce the prevalent misuse of antibiotics in this country.