Drug-resistant superbugs projected to kill 39 million by 2050

Infections of drug-resistant superbugs are projected to kill nearly 40 million people over the next 25 years, a global analysis predicted on Monday, September 16, 2024, with the researchers urging action to avoid this grim scenario.

Superbugs  strains of bacteria or pathogens that have become resistant to antibiotics, making them much harder to treat have been recognised as a rising threat to global health.

The analysis has been billed as the first research to track the global impact of superbugs over time, and to estimate what could happen next.

More than a million people died from the superbugs -- also called antimicrobial resistance (AMR) per year across the world between 1990 and 2021, according to the GRAM study in a report.

Deaths among children under five from superbugs actually fell by more than 50 percent over the last three decades, the study said, due to improving measures to prevent and control infections for infants.However, when children now catch superbugs, the infections are much harder to treat.

And deaths of over-70s have surged by more than 80 percent over the same period, as an ageing population became more vulnerable to infection.

Deaths from infections of MRSA, a type of staph bacteria that has become resistant to many antibiotics, doubled to 130,000 in 2021 from three decades earlier, the study said.

The researchers looked at 22 pathogens, 84 combinations of drugs and pathogens, and 11 infectious syndromes such as meningitis. The study involved data from 520 million individual records across 204 countries and territories.

The researchers used modelling to estimate that, based on current trends, the number of direct deaths from AMR would rise by 67 percent to reach nearly two million a year by 2050.

It would also play a role in a further 8.2 million annual deaths, a jump of nearly 75 percent, according to the modelling.