The annual World Health Assembly took place last week, the meeting of health minsters from 194 countries that serves as the decision-making body for the World Health Organization. In the week-long conclave, the representatives set policy on a number of global health issues—malnutrition, immunization, polio eradication, emergency response to outbreaks such as Ebola— and for the first time, the global crisis of antibiotic resistance.

It remains to be seen whether the actions taken by the assembly will make a difference, but that the delegates committed unanimously to tackling the issue is an advance from just a few years ago, when antibiotic resistance seemed an invisible problem.

The tone for the vote was set at the opening of the assembly, when WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan told the