Data reveal how the global challenge to reduce deaths and infections from drug-resistant bacteria is not going according to plan.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is projected to cause 39 million deaths worldwide over the next 25 years. But global efforts to find treatments for drug-resistant infections are not going to plan, according to two reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) released on 2 October1 2. The reports show that the global antibiotic drug-development pipeline is facing a dual crisis: scarcity of drugs in development and a lack of innovation in methods to fight drug-resistant bacteria.
“Antimicrobial resistance is escalating, but the pipeline of new treatments and diagnostics is insufficient to tackle the spread of drug-resistant bacterial infections,” said Yukiko Nakatani, who is the WHO assistant director-general for health systems in Geneva, Switzerland, in a statement. “Without more investment in research and development (R&D), together with dedicated efforts to ensure that new and existing products reach the people who most need them, drug-resistant infections will continue to spread.”
Public-health research has highlighted the extent of the AMR crisis. A report published in The Lancet 3 last year found that the annual number of deaths from drug-resistant infections could increase to nearly two million by 2050, up from one million a year between 1990 and 2021. The total number of deaths attributable to AMR is predicted to rise to 1.91 million in 2050, with a further 8.22 million associated deaths (see ‘Resistance on the rise’).
“Awareness of this issue is increasing; however, it is still a silent pandemic with many deaths not being attributed to AMR,” says Rietie Venter, a microbiologist at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.
Read the full article here: The rise of ‘nightmare bacteria’: antimicrobial resistance in six charts (Nature)