Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are one of the most serious problems of modern medicine because, unfortunately, they are growing at such a rate that we cannot keep up with new drugs. And they are causing real damage…

Overuse of antibiotics as a result of misconceptions about their effectiveness in viral infections, or prescribing them without checking which bacteria are actually being dealt with, is causing antibiotic-resistant bacteria to grow at an alarming rate. More and more people are dying from common, previously curable infections as available antibiotics become less effective against them. What is the extent of this phenomenon?

Thanks to a study just published in the journal Lancet by an international team of researchers that includes data from 204 countries, we learn that more than 1.2 million people died in 2019 because of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

It is worth emphasizing that this is much higher than the annual number of deaths from AIDS or malaria, which in the same year cost us about 860,000 and 640,000 lives, respectively. Scientists point out that the poorest countries suffer the most, but antibiotic resistance poses a serious threat to all. Accordingly, they call for immediate major investments in new drugs, because it will take years to develop them, and in the meantime the situation will only get worse.

For example, UK experts warn that unwarranted attempts to treat COVID-19 with antibiotics could lead to a real pandemic in a pandemic environment.

It is also worth stressing that the figure of 1.2 million refers only to deaths directly caused by bacteria resistant to antibiotics (mainly lower respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia, which resulted in sepsis), because if we take into account deaths in which superbacteria played a role, we are talking about up to 5 million patients !

The most deadly of the bacteria is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), but E. coli and several other bacteria known to be resistant are also on the list.

We also learn that the most vulnerable patient group is children under the age of 5, where one in five deaths is associated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. As for the regions with the worst situation in general, i.e. patients of all ages, it is sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where the death rate from superbacteria is 24 cases per 100,000 population.