Global deaths — including those of infants, elderly and vulnerable people — will rise significantly if action on antimicrobial resistance is not prioritised, warns a new study published in The Lancet.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites evolve to resist the effects of medications that once effectively treated them.
This resistance makes standard treatments ineffective, leading to persistent infections and increasing the risk of spread to others.
The study said currently, more than 49 lakh people annually die due to AMR. According to the estimates of a new modelling analysis as part of a new four-paper series published in The Lancet, 7.5 lakh deaths linked to AMR could be prevented every year in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) through available vaccines, water and sanitation, and infection-control methods.
The authors of the series call for “urgent global action” on AMR and ensuring sustainable access to antibiotics.
“The window of opportunity to ensure our ability to treat bacterial infections is shrinking,” said co-author Ramanan Laxminarayan, founder and president of the One Health Trust, an independent research organisation headquartered in Washington.
“For too long, the problem of AMR has been seen as either not urgent or too difficult to solve. Neither is true. We need immediate action and the tools to do so are widely available. We hope that this September, the United Nations High-Level Meeting will ensure that there is also the global will to act.”
How is AMR a huge threat to newborns, the elderly & ill?
The series highlights how babies, children, the elderly and people with chronic illness are most vulnerable to AMR as they have a higher risk of contracting bacterial infections in general.
“AMR is a huge threat to newborn survival around the world. A third of deaths in newborn babies globally are caused by infections and half of those to sepsis (a potentially lethal system-wide response to infection),” said the paper. “Increasingly, the bacteria or fungi which cause these infections are no longer responding to most readily available antibiotics.”
The authors share an example of another study involving 11 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America between 2018 to 2020 where 18 per cent babies with sepsis did not survive despite being given antibiotics.
It said elderly and chronically ill people also face significant risk from AMR, especially when seeking treatment for medical conditions in hospitals and long-term care facilities. “AMR undermines the safety of common medical procedures such as organ transplants, joint replacements, cancer chemotherapy, and treatment of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic lung illnesses.”
Need support for sustainable access to antibiotics
Authors of the new Lancet Series call for support for sustainable access to antibiotics to be central to ambitious and actionable targets on tackling AMR introduced at the High-Level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2024.
The seven authors of the study said publicly funded models of antibiotic development based on public-private partnerships could increase the amount of novel alternatives, as well as lower patients’ out-of-pocket costs, making them more accessible.
They also call for greater funding for AMR prevention programmes in general, as funding for AMR significantly lags behind that for diseases with smaller burdens such as HIV, malaria, and TB.
The series also calls for the establishment of an independent scientific body — an Independent Panel on Antimicrobial Access and Resistance — to expand the evidence base for policy implementation and to inform new targets.
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