The bacteria E. coli.
Credit: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

A new report on antimicrobial resistance calls for greater action by stakeholders at all levels lest so-called “superbugs” claim 10 million lives a year.

“There is no time to wait,” says the report, released Monday by the U.N. Interagency Coordination Group (IACG) on Antimicrobial Resistance.

“Unless the world acts urgently, antimicrobial resistance will have disastrous impact within a generation,” IACG says.

The threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is already deadly, with 700,000 people dying each year as a result of drug-resistant diseases.

There is also problem of inequity and lack of affordable access, which the report links to the deaths of “nearly 6 million people annually, including a million children who die of preventable sepsis and pneumonia.”

Fast forward to 2050, the report adds, and AMR could cause as many as 10 million deaths each year under a worst case scenario.

Beyond claiming lives, says IACG, unchecked AMR would also unleash economic damage on the order of “the shocks experienced during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis as a […]