By 2050, 39 million people could die from drug-resistant germs: “Now is the time to act”

By 2050, antibiotic resistance is expected to become one of the biggest killers of our species. Hundreds of thousands of people already die each year from drug-resistant infections. And yet we are only just beginning to understand the true extent of this catastrophe.

In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists analyzed the evolution of drug-resistant infections around the world and estimated that an average of more than one million people died each year as a result of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) between 1990 and 2021. By extrapolating this data, the team estimated that this number could almost double by 2050.

“We estimate that between 2025 and 2050, 39.1 million deaths will be directly attributable to AMR, with the greatest burden in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia,” said Daniel Araki, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and one of the study's co-authors. News week.

“Estimates show that AMR has been a constant and growing global health threat since 1990,” Araki said.

The team estimated that, in addition to direct deaths, antimicrobial resistance will contribute to 8.22 million deaths per year by 2050, rising to 4.71 million in 2021.

“To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive analysis of bacterial AMR trends over time, covering 23 pathogens, 84 pathogen-drug combinations, 11 infectious syndromes in 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2021,” said Araki. “This large scale enabled the assessment of changing trends in AMR mortality to improve our understanding of this pervasive and growing health threat.”

He continued: “Our time trend analysis also allows us to make projections to show the growing impact of AMR if global governance does not change, and to demonstrate the enormous impact that improvements in prevention, care and access to new treatments can have.”

So what needs to be done to combat antibiotic resistance and save millions of lives? Araki made the following suggestions:

• Improving prevention and control measures, including better financing and access to new antibiotics and vaccines, as well as clean water and sanitation.
• Improve the quality of medical care in hospitals and health centers by improving diagnostic capacity, training qualified medical personnel, implementing infection prevention and control measures, and providing novel treatments for people with advanced diseases.
• There needs to be greater public and private sector involvement to boost funding for new antibiotics and ensure that these medicines reach the populations that need them most.

Study co-author Kevin Ikuta says: “Now is the time to act to protect people around the world from the threat of AMR.”

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reference

GBD 2021 Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators (2024). Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with projections to 2050. The Lancet.