On April 29, the United Nations issued a report warning about the dangers of drug-resistant infections. According to the report, such infections already kill 700,000 people per year, and 230,000 of those deaths are caused by drug-resistant tuberculosis. Overuse of antifungal drugs and antibiotics in agriculture and on humans and livestock have caused many infectious agents to develop a resistance.
The UN warns that drug-resistant infections could kill 10 million people per year by 2050 and cause an economic crisis as severe as 2008’s Great Recession.
The impending crisis will affect the entire world. The UN experts estimate that 2.4 million people in the wealthier regions like Australia, Europe, and North America could die from drug-resistant infections between now and 2050. Those infections will also make routine procedures like childbirth and knee replacement far more hazardous than they are now.
Dr. Haileyesus Getahun, the director of the UN Interagency Coordination Group On Antimicrobial Resistance, calls the crisis a “silent tsunami,” for it has so far drawn little attention. He warns that antimicrobial resistance could have a disastrous impact within a generation.
Dr. Getahun’s group, which included public health authorities, industry experts, and government ministers, spent two years working on the report, and they made recommendations on how to prevent the crisis from worsening. They suggested the formation of an independent body similar to the UN’s panel on climate change.
Their report included measures designed to address some of the factors that had led to the overuse of antibiotics and similar drugs. For example, they recommended a global ban on using antibiotics to stimulate growth in livestock. They also recommended stringent rules limiting the sale of antibiotics in convenience stores without a prescription. They suggested offering financial incentives to pharmaceutical companies to encourage them to develop new drugs that microbes have not yet developed a resistance to.
The problems caused by drug-resistant infections are particularly acute in poorer countries that lack the sanitation and clean water of more developed countries. The report thus recommended financial aid to improve public hygiene and increase access to vaccinations.
Many countries also lack the means to monitor drug-resistant infections, which limits the ability of health officials to understand or respond to them. When the UN conducted a survey about the use of antimicrobial drugs on animals, 39 of the 146 countries surveyed couldn’t provide any of the requested data.
Nonetheless, the report does not consider drug-resistant infections an insurmountable problem. The global ban on using medications to promote growth in livestock alone would be a large help in mitigating the crisis.
