ohIn the next 25 years, someone will die every three minutes from common, preventable and previously treatable health conditions, simply because the antibiotics we use to treat them have stopped being effective. Unless, that is, the world acts to respond to the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Antibiotics have been a cornerstone of modern medicine for decades, but today some of the life-saving medicines we depend on are under threat. This is because the bacteria that cause conditions such as pneumonia and diarrhea change so that they no longer respond to these treatments. Routine procedures, from surgery to childbirth, are becoming riskier, increasing the likelihood of fatal complications and threatening our health systems. No one is safe from the threat of AMR.
We are now starting to build a picture for the first time of how this resistance affects people’s care. The Lancet recently published new research from the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (Gram) Project, which revealed that deaths directly attributable to bacterial AMR continue to rise. This may come as a surprise to some, as we would expect the incredible progress we have made in recent decades in reducing infections to limit deaths from AMR. Nevertheless, the new analysis using records dating back to 1990 found that more than a million lives were lost to AMR each year, adding up to more than 36 million — and these numbers are rising.
Increasing rates of resistance and a rapidly aging global population highly vulnerable to infection will only accelerate this trend. The latest forecasts also suggest that global deaths attributable to AMR will increase by almost 70%, reaching 1.91 million deaths per year by 2050. These figures should be a warning to politicians around the world: without urgent action, a further 39 million lives will be lost within a generation.
This important study confirms that the world is facing an antibiotic emergency, with devastating human costs for families and communities around the world. This vindicates our calls to all sectors to act decisively now to save lives and protect modern medicine for future generations, and to address the needs of low- and middle-income countries that bear the greatest tragedies of AMR. It’s time to reverse the trend, before it’s too late.
For years we fought AMR somewhat in the dark, but today we are starting to see more data emerge that can help us understand the global picture, map out how to respond to the spread of AMR and international action unlocked. Following the publication of Gram’s first paper in 2021, countries such as the UK, Ghana and Thailand have already used this data to develop policy and implement coordinated action plans, while the World Health Organization used the estimates to develop its 2024 list of priority bacterial pathogens. To move the needle on AMR, the latest Gram findings and surveillance data must remain at the forefront of global decision-making and be used to develop effective, data-led national action plans.
The picture may be bleak, but it is not without hope. Simply improving access to better healthcare for serious infections and ensuring proper access to antibiotics could save 92 million lives between 2025 and 2050. Developing alternative drugs that are effective against the bacteria that have developed resistance could save around 11 million more .
this week, world leaders will gather at the UN general assembly high-level meeting on AMR in New York. We will hear from experts from around the world – from health researchers, financial professionals and national leaders to healthcare chiefs, disease specialists and the pharmaceutical industry – before making bold decisions about how the world will reverse this worrying trend. It is clear from the latest evidence that we need a commitment to put the most vulnerable first, by scaling up funding and action to achieve equitable access to treatments, vaccines and diagnostics. After that, we all have to work together to turn the situation around.
From cancer patients in the UK and the elderly in Japan to children in Niger, no one is exempt from the threat of AMR. This is a global crisis that requires global action. Now is the time to be bold and ambitious in our actions to ensure that current and future generations have effective and accessible antibiotics, because millions of lives are at stake.
