"Antibiotics have turned once deadly infections into minor inconveniences. They make lifesaving interventions, from surgery to chemotherapy, safer. But every time this powerful tool gets used, there's a risk antibiotic resistance. Out of the billions of bacteria causing an infection in an individual, some small fraction may be naturally resistant to a given drug. Taking an antibiotic can clear the field for those resistant bacteria to spread."
""Antimicrobial resistance is just basic evolution," says Kevin Ikuta, an infectious disease physician and researcher at UCLA. He says we need antibiotics, but "we are in this battle we're trying to lose as slowly as possible anytime we treat an infection." Humans are losing that battle faster than previously thought. In 2023, roughly 1 in 6 infections tested by labs worldwide were resistant to antibiotic treatment, according to WHO."
Antibiotics transformed once-deadly infections and made surgeries and chemotherapy safer, but their use selects for resistant bacteria through natural evolution. Resistance increased sharply: in 2023 about one in six laboratory-tested infections were resistant, and nearly 40% of antibiotics for common urinary, gut, blood and sexually transmitted infections lost effectiveness over five years. Antimicrobial resistance directly causes roughly 1.2 million deaths annually and contributes to nearly 5 million deaths. Increases were sharpest in low- and middle-income countries and in places with weaker surveillance and health systems, raising urgent concerns about a growing global health crisis.
#antimicrobial-resistance #antibiotics #global-health #surveillance-gaps #low--and-middle-income-countries
Read at www.npr.org
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