PARIS: A global analysis released on Monday projects that drug-resistant superbugs, or antimicrobial resistance (AMR), could cause nearly 40 million deaths over the next 25 years if current trends continue. The study, published in The Lancet journal, underscores the urgent need for enhanced global action to mitigate this looming health crisis.
Superbugs are strains of bacteria and pathogens that have evolved to resist the effects of antibiotics, rendering conventional treatments ineffective and making infections increasingly difficult to manage.
The GRAM (Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance) study, which is the first of its kind to assess the long-term global impact of superbugs, reveals alarming statistics about their impact on global health.
Between 1990 and 2021, AMR was responsible for over a million deaths annually worldwide. While improvements in infection control have led to a more than 50 percent reduction in deaths among children under five over the past three decades, these younger patients now face harder-to-treat infections when they do fall ill.
In contrast, deaths among individuals over 70 have surged by over 80 percent during the same period, reflecting the heightened vulnerability of an ageing population to these resistant infections.
The study highlights a significant increase in fatalities related to MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a particularly problematic strain of staph bacteria. MRSA-related deaths doubled to 130,000 in 2021 compared to three decades earlier.
The researchers utilized advanced modeling techniques to project future trends, estimating that AMR could directly cause nearly two million deaths annually by 2050, representing a 67 percent increase from current levels.
Moreover, AMR could contribute to an additional 8.2 million deaths each year, a 75 percent increase from current estimates. This would bring the total number of deaths directly and indirectly attributed to AMR to approximately 39 million over the next 25 years.
However, the study also suggests that less severe scenarios are possible if global efforts are intensified. Enhanced treatment protocols for severe infections and improved access to antimicrobial drugs could potentially save 92 million lives by 2050.
The analysis, which examined data from 520 million individual records across 204 countries and territories, evaluated 22 pathogens, 84 drug-pathogen combinations, and 11 infectious syndromes including meningitis.
“This research highlights that AMR has been a significant global health threat for decades and is only set to grow,” said Mohsen Naghavi, a co-author of the study from the Institute of Health Metrics in the US. “The data underscores the urgent need for comprehensive global action to address this escalating issue.”
Jeremy Knox, the head of infectious disease policy at the Wellcome Trust, emphasized the profound implications of rising AMR rates. “An increasing AMR burden at the scale described in the GRAM report would represent a steady undermining of modern medicine as we know it. The antibiotics we rely on for routine medical procedures could lose their effectiveness,” Knox warned.
