Reported from a news article published on Monday, about 40 million people could die from infections due to drug-resistant microorganisms within 25 years. This research aims at urging people into doing what is possible in order to avoid such infections. Some of the microorganisms in the anti-microbial resistant organisms’ classes are called superbugs and they cannot be deported using antibiotics and they are dangerous to the health of a human. Â
This approach is the first attempt to measure how superbugs affect different parts of the world at different times, and to predict future patterns based on the information collected. The GRAM study in the Lancet shows that from 1990 to 2021, AMR caused over a million deaths from infections each year.Â
With extra appropriate infection control measures during the years, the mortality from sup erbugs in children under five years was slashed in half in the duration even though those suffering from AMR bacteria are not easy to treat.Â
On the other hand, these disease related deaths in Uganda have been increasing by more than 80% of the people aged over seventy years implying that as the society ages, many elderly people, it becomes prone to infections. Â
There is one type of bacteria that appears to be almost shockingly evil though and that is of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus which is a type of staphylococcal bacteria with the capability of defeating a number of antibiotics. In 2021, there were fresh new casualty figures in being MRSA Patients equaled 130,000, twice as many as seen three decades earlier.Â
That is why statistics mentioned above prove that superbugs are not the things of the future; they are already here.Â
Another study by Messina et al. (2019) looked at trends in AMR deaths and how they might change. They think yearly AMR deaths could go up by 67% reaching about two million by 2050.Â
This means AMR deaths will increase by another 8.2 million each year, a 75% jump. We expect superbugs to kill 39 million people leading to 169 million total deaths in the next 25 years.Â
The researchers then talked about the downsides of these predictions. They showed more hopeful results if the world focuses on better infection control and antibiotic use.Â
The study claims that changes in how we do things could save 92 million lives by 2050. The GRAM report looked at 22 germs, 84 drug-pathogen pairs, and 11 health issues, including brain swelling. It used 520 million records from 204 countries/territories making it the biggest AMR study so far.Â
The results indicate that AMR has been a threat to public health for several decades and also that even this threat is on the rise. One of the co-authors of the work from the Institute for Health Metrics based in the United States, Mohsen Naghavi, pointed out that AMR has been on the rise and can, in that respect, not be overlooked. Â
Reference Â
Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with forecasts to 2050, The Lancet (2024).
