Drug-resistant superbugs are expected to kill 39 million people by 2050

Infections with drug-resistant superbugs are expected to kill nearly 40 million people over the next 25 years, according to a global analysis released on Monday, prompting researchers to call for urgent action to avert this dire scenario.

Superbugs – strains of bacteria or pathogens that have become resistant to antibiotics and are therefore much harder to treat – are considered a growing threat to global health.

The analysis is considered the first study to track the global impact of superbugs over time and estimate what might happen next.

According to the GRAM study, between 1990 and 2021, more than one million people worldwide died each year from superbugs – also known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The Lancet Magazine.

The number of deaths from superbugs in children under five has actually fallen by more than 50 percent over the past three decades, the study says. The reason for this is improved measures to prevent and combat infections in young children.

However, when children become infected with superbugs today, treating these infections is much more difficult.

And deaths among those over 70 increased by more than 80 percent over the same period as the ageing population became more vulnerable to infection.

The number of deaths from infections with MRSA, a type of staphylococcus that has become resistant to many antibiotics, has doubled to 130,000 in 2021 compared with three decades earlier, the study said.

Using modeling techniques, the researchers concluded that current trends would increase the number of direct deaths from antibiotic resistance by 67 percent, reaching nearly two million per year by 2050.

In addition, according to the modelling, it would contribute to an additional 8.2 million deaths per year, an increase of almost 75 percent.

Threat to modern medicine

In this scenario, antibacterial resistance would directly kill 39 million people over the next quarter century and contribute to 169 million deaths overall, it said.

However, less severe scenarios are also possible.

If global efforts are made to improve treatment of severe infections and access to antimicrobial medicines, models estimate that 92 million lives could be saved by 2050.

The researchers examined 22 pathogens, 84 combinations of drugs and pathogens, and 11 infectious syndromes such as meningitis.

The study included data from 520 million individual records from 204 countries and territories.

“These findings underscore that AMR has been a significant global health threat for decades and that this threat is growing,” said study co-author Mohsen Naghavi of the U.S. Institute of Health Metrics.

Jeremy Knox, head of infection policy at the UK-based health organisation Wellcome Trust, warned that the impact of rising AMR rates would be felt around the world.

“An increasing AMR burden on the scale described in the GRAM report would mean a steady undermining of modern medicine as we know it, as the antibiotics we rely on to perform common medical procedures safely and routinely could lose their effectiveness,” Knox told AFP.

Although political attention to the issue has steadily increased over the past decade, “there still need to be governments around the world that go far enough and act fast enough to address the threat of AMR,” he added.

He described a high-level AMR meeting at the United Nations scheduled for September 26 as a “decisive moment” in the fight against superbugs.

Antibiotic resistance is a natural phenomenon, but the excessive and inappropriate use of antibiotics in humans, animals and plants has exacerbated the problem.

© 2024 AFP