STUDY: 1.2MN DIED IN ’19 DUE TO ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT INFECTIONS

NEW DELHI: At least 1.2 million people died in 2019 as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, according to a study published in the medical journal ‘The Lancet’. This is by far the most comprehensive estimate of the global impact of antimicrobial resistance, according to researchers. The analysis of 204 countries and territories, found that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was now a leading cause of death worldwide, higher than HIV/ AIDS or malaria. In effect, many hundreds of thousands of deaths now occur due to common, previously treatable infections – such as lower respiratory and bloodstream infections as the bacteria that cause them have become resistant to drugs. The report highlights an urgent need to scale up action to combat AMR, and outlines immediate actions for policymakers that will help save lives and protect health systems. These include optimising the use of existing antibiotics, taking greater action to monitor and control infections, and providing more funding to develop new antibiotics and treatments. “These new data reveal the true scale of antimicrobial resistance worldwide, and are a clear signal that we must act now to combat the threat. Previous estimates had predicted 10 million annual deaths from antimicrobial resistance by 2050, but we now know for certain that we are already far closer to that figure than we thought. We need to leverage this data to course-correct action and drive innovation if we want to stay ahead in the race against antimicrobial resistance,” said study co-author Chris Murray, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington. Estimates of the health impacts of AMR have been published for several countries and regions, and for a small number of pathogen-drug combinations in a wider range of locations. However, until now, no estimates have covered all locations and a broad range of pathogens and drug combinations, according to the researchers. The Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) report estimates deaths linked to 23 pathogens and 88 pathogendrug combinations in 204 countries and territories in 2019. “Statistical modelling was used to produce estimates of the impact of AMR in all locations – including those with no data – using 471 million individual records obtained from literature reviews, hospital systems, surveillance systems, and other sources,” read the paper. “The paper doesn’t project that in 2050 so many people would die of AMR; it gives us the present real world scenario,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy. Drug-resistance in lower respiratory infections – such as pneumonia – had the greatest impact on AMR disease burden, causing more than 400,000 deaths and associated with more than 1.5 million deaths.