AMR kills millions

The world is fixated on viruses thanks to COVID-19. Public and private sectors have mobilized extraordinary levels of resources in tackling the pandemic, including developing vaccines in record time and antiviral and antiretroviral treatments for the disease. In the process, however, another major microbial threat has been neglected. In a study published in The Lancet in January, researchers at the University of Washington estimated that 1.3 million people die each year from bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics. Such infections kill more people annually than do HIV/AIDS, diarrhea, and malaria. Antibiotic resistance causes more deaths than any infectious disease apart from COVID-19 and tuberculosis.

These new estimates have brought the problem of antibiotic resistance out of the shadows and confirmed what most public health experts, researchers, and clinicians have known for a long time: the overuse of antibiotics risks making the drugs useless and brewing the next major health crisis. As incomes around the world have risen, so has the consumption of antibiotics—in particular in the agricultural sector, where the drugs are used at an industrial scale on animals. Such extensive use creates the conditions that allow bacteria to become resistant to the drugs. Antibiotic resistance could well become the leading cause of death by infectious disease in the coming years. In 2016, the United Nations General Assembly called for global action to protect the world’s antibiotics, but there has been little progress since. The consequences of inaction are serious. With antibiotics rendered ineffective, societies would return to a world of greater death and deteriorating life expectancy in which common surgeries, transplants, and chemotherapy become much more dangerous because of the high risk of untreatable infection.