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40 million deaths by 2050: toll of drug-resistant infections to rise by 70%

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2024-09-19 16:30:03

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Acinetobacter baumannii — a bacterium associated with hospital-acquired infections that can develop resistance to antibiotics. Credit: Eye Of Science/Science Photo Library

More than 39 million people will die from antibiotic-resistant infections between now and 2050, according to an in-depth global analysis of antimicrobial resistance.

The report, published on 16 September in The Lancet1, found that between 1990 and 2021, more than one million people died from drug-resistant infections each year, and this could increase to nearly 2 million by 2050. Around 92 million lives could be saved between 2025 and 2050 with wider access to appropriate antibiotics and better treatment of infections, the report estimates.

“This is an important contribution for understanding how we’ve gotten where we are, and for giving a rational expectation of the future burden of [resistance] in order to inform next steps that can be undertaken,” says Joseph Lewnard, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley.