Dame Sally Davies has a straightforward message about the coming year. We face a growing antibiotic emergency that could have devastating impacts on men, women and children across the globe, she says.
Davies, a former chief medical officer for England, has become a leading advocate for global action to fight the scourge of superbugs.
She told the Observer that there is a real danger that routine procedures – from surgery to childbirth – could carry widespread life-threatening risks because of the spread of bacteria that possess antimicrobial resistance (AMR). “About a million people die every year because of the spread of microbial resistance, and that figure will rise over the next 25 years,” she said. “It is really scary.”
Estimates suggest that by 2050, death rates from AMRs will have doubled, with figures indicating almost 40 million people will lose their lives to superbugs over the next 25 years, with elderly people especially at risk.
i hope the doctors are good at careful diagnosing.
I hope they make factory farms keep cleaner, healthier conditions and ban routine antibiotics in feed.
Antibiotics have always been a war we are losing. Bacteria are designed to adapt to them.
We’ll need a new weapon, like bacteriophages, to have any chance at all.
It’s being developed. I know Slovenia has been working with phages for years now. They used to be at the forefront of the research, but I don’t know if they still are.
I kbew we were big into the pharmaceutical stuff but did not know we are working on this as well.
I admit that was something about Slovenia that was true in the early 2000s and I didn’t know if it was still true.
Looks like they started having yearly conferences devoted to bacteriophage research starting in 2023 at the University of Ljubljana, so that’s some positive news.
Interesting. I would go to the meeting but sadly have exams on the same day.
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- current rate is 1million/year
- estimated 40million/25years,
- 60% increase YoY
This. While 40 million is a big number does this take into account other comorbidities? A lot of people who contract MRSA tend to die of pneumonia before the infection kills them. These superbugs live in hospitals afterall. Also the timeframe of 25 years makes this claim even more suspect.
In other news there are a lot of people working on the superbug problem.
In 25 years? Might as well never happen. Let’s ignore this.
muh profits!
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