United States: Almost over the next 25 years, somebody will die every three minutes from these common, preventable and formerly treatable diseases because the antibiotics which is used in tacking such diseases will no longer work. Unless, however, the world increases its efforts to counter the rising problem of AMR – antimicrobial resistance.
As reported by The Guardian, antibiotics are a well-known stalwart of our modern treatment Armory, yet today some of the drugs we rely on are in trouble. This is because there is some type of bacteria that causes pneumonia and diarrhoea then develops resistance to these treatments.
Even simple everyday processes like operations, deliveries, are getting more dangerous, meaning that dangerous complications are more possible, and post-modern health care jeopardizes our health care institutions. There is no one in today’s society who will not be at risk of AMR at least once in their life.
For the first time, we are beginning to piece together the picture of what this resistance looks like and how it impacts people’s care. There is ‘no good news’ from a recent Lancet paper from the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (Gram) Project: deaths proximate to bacterial AMR are increasing.
This may come as a shock to some since everyone expects the tremendous advancement made in combating infections over the few decades to minimize infection by AMR. However, this new study based on records going back to 1990 reveals that every year AMR is responsible for more than one million deaths, an overall total exceeding 36 million and these figures are still on the increase.
Extremely high levels of resistance already and an ageing population worldwide which is much more susceptible to bacterial infections will only fuel this trend further.
The new projections also indicate that global deaths due to AMR will rise to nearly 1.91 million per year by 2050, or 69% higher.
These figures should be a warning to politicians around the world without urgent action a further 39 million lives will be the lost within a generation.
This particular study confirms that the world is facing the antibiotic emergency with devastating human costs for the families and the communities across the globe and it substantiates our calls to all the sectors to take the decisive action now to save the lives and the safeguard the modern medicine for the generations to come and the address the needs of low and the middle income countries who bear the greatest tragedies from the AMR and this is the time to reverse the trend before it’s too late.
For the almost four years we’ve been fighting the AMR somewhat in the dark but today we are looking for the vast data that can. Hep us to understand the bigger picture and the map out of how to respond to the spread of AMR to unlock the international action.