Geneva: The World Health Organization sounded the alarm Monday over soaring numbers of drug-resistant bacterial infections, compromising the effectiveness of life-saving treatments and rendering minor injuries and common infections potentially deadly.
The United Nations’ health agency warned that one in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections worldwide in 2023 showed resistance to antibiotic treatments.
“These findings are deeply concerning,” Yvan J-F. Hutin, head of the WHO’s antimicrobial resistance department, told reporters. “As antibiotic resistance continues to rise, we’re running out of treatment options and we’re putting lives at risk.”
Bacteria have long developed resistance against medicines designed to fight them, rendering many drugs useless.This has been accelerated by the massive use of antibiotics to treat humans, animals and food. Antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) superbugs directly cause over a million deaths and contribute to nearly five million deaths every year, according to the WHO.
In a report on AMR surveillance, the WHO examined resistance prevalence estimates across 22 antibiotics used to treat infections of the urinary and gastrointestinal tracts, the bloodstream and those used to treat gonorrhoea.