Drug-resistant superbugs projected to kill 39 million by 2050

Global analysis predicts drug-resistant superbugs could kill 40 million by 2050, urging urgent action to prevent catastrophic scenario.

Infections of drug-resistant superbugs are projected to kill nearly 40 million people over the next 25 years, a global analysis predicted on Monday, September 16, 2024, with the researchers urging action to avoid this grim scenario.

Superbugs -- strains of bacteria or pathogens that have become resistant to antibiotics, making them much harder to treat -- have been recognised as a rising threat to global health.

The analysis has been billed as the first research to track the global impact of superbugs over time, and to estimate what could happen next.

More than a million people died from the superbugs -- also called antimicrobial resistance (AMR) -- per year across the world between 1990 and 2021, according to the GRAM study in The Lancet journal.

Deaths among children under five from superbugs actually fell by more than 50 percent over the last three decades, the study said, due to improving measures to prevent and control infections for infants. However, when children now catch superbugs, the infections are much harder to treat.

And deaths of over-70s have surged by more than 80 percent over the same period, as an ageing population became more vulnerable to infection.

Deaths from infections of MRSA, a type of staph bacteria that has become resistant to many antibiotics, doubled to 130,000 in 2021 from three decades earlier, the study said.