BOSTON: Drug-resistant infections such as E. coli and salmonella could kill 10 million people a year by 2050, a government report says.
Economist Jim O’Neill was commissioned to look into anti-microbial resistance after government warned it could put medicine “back into the Dark Ages”.
In his interim report, O’Neill warned that global output worth $US100 trillion would be lost unless an answer was found to antibiotic-resistant infections.
“Drug-resistant infections already kill hundreds of thousands a year globally and by 2050 that figure could be more than 10 million,” he said.
Hip and knee replacements, as well as caesarean sections, chemotherapy and transplant surgery, would be much riskier or even impossible without antibiotics doctors were sure would work.
O’Neill said one strain of E. coli had already become untreatable because of its resistance to carbapenems, which are considered the last-resort antibiotics.
There has not been a new class of antibiotics in 25 years because pharmaceutical companies see a minimal return for the huge investment in coming up with new drugs that risk quickly being overwhelmed in the arms-race against bacteria.
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