A Foreboding Future

Failure to tackle drug-resistant infections will lead to at least 10 million extra deaths a year by 2050, a report has warned. To put the figures in context there are currently 8.2 million deaths a year from cancer. A “low estimate” of the current number of annual global deaths is put at 700,000.

No country is considered immune from the threat but for some regions and nations the outlook is particularly bleak. The world’s most populous countries, India and China, face 2 million and 1 million deaths a year respectively by 2050 and one in every four deaths in Nigeria by then is forecast to be attributable to AMR. Africa as a continent “will suffer greatly”, the report warns.

Being capitalism, the human tragedy is translated into cash terms. It will cost the global economy up to $100tn (£64tn), $15tn of which is from Europe, by 2050. Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill, who chaired the report, said “As big as that number seems it almost definitely underestimates the economic cost.” 

He explained that this was because the study looked only at a subset of drug-resistant bacteria and public-health issues and did not examine the social costs, the demand on national healthcare systems and secondary health effects – the danger that interventions that have become routine in the developed world which rely heavily on antibiotics could be severely undermined. Caesarian sections, joint replacements and chemotherapy, by keeping people economically active, could together account for another $100tn between now and 2050, according to the report, although that amount would not be completely lost.

The SOYMB blog has previously posted about the pharmaceutical industry's reluctance to invest in research for new antibiotics because of the low profit margins involved.