700,000 People die worldwide from AMR infections
Each year ~700,000 people die from drug-resistant infections of common bacterial strains, HIV, TB, and malaria. Poor global reporting and surveillance mean that this number is likely an underestimate of the problem! If nothing changes, by 2050 AMR will be the leading cause of death, with an estimated 10 million deaths, surpassing the estimated 8.2 million deaths due to cancer. This would mean one person every three seconds. The associated economic burden would mean a total GDP loss of $100 trillion, and each person in the world today would be $10,000 worse off. In the US alone, >2 million infections a year are caused by bacteria resistant to at least the first-line of antibiotic treatment, costing the US health system $20 billion in excess costs each year. The resistance rates are projected to continue to rise, in the short term to 40% of infections, and in 10 years to 100% by some estimates. It is expected that hospital acquired resistant infections will double.
AMR is not a problem that can be solved by any one country, or even any one region. It is a complex problem affecting all of society, driven by many interconnected factors. The world we live in is connected where people, animals, and food travel globally, bringing the microbes they carry with them, easily spreading resistant microbes across borders and continents. Antimicrobial resistance has been found in all regions of the world. In India, nearly 60,000 newborns die each year from multidrug-resistant and extremely drug-resistant TB infections.