Fears of a global health emergency as resistance to antibiotics grows
ADVANCEMENTS IN modern medicine are being dramatically undermined as antibiotics are running out, global health leaders have today warned.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has claimed that “antimicrobial resistance is a global health emergency”, as growing resistance to drugs that fight infections could “seriously jeopardise” progress made in modern medicine.
The remarks come after a new WHO report found a serious lack of new drugs in development to combat the growing threat of antibiotic resistance.
Health experts have previously warned that resistance to antimicrobial drugs could cause a bigger threat to mankind than cancer.
The Director-General of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “Antimicrobial resistance is a global health emergency that will seriously jeopardise progress in modern medicine.
“There is an urgent need for more investment in research and development for antibioticresistant infections including TB, otherwise we will be forced back to a time when people feared common infections and risked their lives from minor surgery.”
In recent years, there has been a UK drive to raise global awareness of the threat posed to modern medicine by antimicrobial
resistance. If antibiotics lose their effectiveness, then key medical procedures – including gut surgery, caesarean sections, joint replacements and chemotherapy – could become too dangerous to perform.
About 700,000 people around the world die annually due to drug-resistant infections including drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria. If no action is taken, it has been estimated that drug-resistant infections will kill 10 million people a year by 2050.
The WHO previously drew up a list of antibiotic-resistant infections posing the greatest threat to health, and it has now examined new drugs in the development pipeline. The new report found few potential treatment options for those antibiotic-resistant infections – including drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) which kills about 250,000 people each year.
There is also a lack of treatment options for gram-negative pathogens, including Acinetobacter and Enterobacteriaceae, such as Klebsiella and E.coli – which can cause deadly infections and pose a particular threat in hospitals and nursing homes, the WHO said.
The report’s authors called for more investment in basic science, drug discovery and clinical development, and the WHO stressed that new treatments alone will not be enough to combat the threat of antimicrobial resistance.