Antimicrobial resistance is an emergent healthcare threat that will doom our lives if not properly tackled. In the past years, groundbreaking reports have helped the communities to get the extent of this emergency with statistics and projections. The planning and execution of countermeasures struggles against a weakened technological innovation, which is nonetheless the main focus and commitment of Sterify. In this article, we have summarized some of these data to get the “numbers of antimicrobial resistance”.
Numbers of deaths and healthcare cost related to antimicrobial resistance now and in 2050 if no action is taken:
· 700,000 people worldwide die each year because of drug-resistant infections.
· If no action is taken, drug-resistant diseases could cause 10 million deaths each year by 2050.
· If no action is taken, antimicrobial resistance could force up to 24 million people to extreme poverty by 2050.
· Each patient developing a resistant infection results in about USD 10,000 to 40,000 extra healthcare costs.
· The cumulative economic cost of antimicrobial resistance will reach 100 trillion dollars by 2050.
· 2/3 of this extra healthcare cost will be borne by low- and middle-income countries through multi-drug resistant tuberculosis for example, or failing treatments for pneumonia.
Numbers related to the dramatic failure of innovation in the antibiotics field:
· The approval of antibiotics has fallen to a meagre one eighth of what it used to be 30 years ago.
· The last major new class of antimicrobials was discovered three decades ago.
· The number of antibiotic-related patents filed at the global level decreased from 8600 in the years 2004 – 2005 to roughly 5000 now.
· The number of large pharmaceutical companies that are active in this field has declined from 18 in 1990 to 6in 2016.
Interestingly, antimicrobial resistance is not only driven by antibiotic misuse and abuse in humans, but also by its use in livestock and its environmental pollution.
· Global veterinary consumption of antibiotics in 2013 was around 131,000 tonnes.
· It is estimated that in most developed nations, livestock alone use 70–80% of antibiotics produced
· 90% of antibiotics consumed by animals are excreted — releasing them into the natural environment for dispersal in ground and surface waters.
· An effluent from a WWTP in Hyderabad, India, downstream of 90 antibiotics production facilities was found to be highly enriched for clinically important drugs such as ciprofloxacin, leading to concentrations one million times higher than average waste water concentrations for the drug.
· It is estimated that 75% of the U.S. population has been exposed to triclosan or other antibiotics via consumer goods.
Sources:
