Since their discovery a century ago, antimicrobial medicines — including antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, and antiparasitics — have significantly extended average life expectancy.
Every day, these essential medicines save millions of lives. Until they don’t. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial medicines.
As a result, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective, making infections harder or impossible to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death.
The situation is more critical than it appears. AMR is directly responsible for 1.3 million deaths and contributes to 5 million deaths every year. But this is just the start. AMR also threatens our economic future, with an estimated global annual cost of up to US$3.4 trillion by 2030 and 28 million people pushed to poverty by 2050.