The WHO yesterday sounded the alarm over soaring numbers of drug-resistant bacterial infections, compromising the effectiveness of life-saving treatments, and rendering minor injuries and common infections potentially deadly.
The UN health agency warned that one in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections worldwide in 2023 showed resistance to antibiotic treatments.
“These findings are deeply concerning,” Yvan J-F. Hutin, head of the WHO’s antimicrobial resistance department, told reporters. “As antibiotic resistance continues to rise, we’re running out of treatment options and we’re putting lives at risk.”
Photo: AFP
Bacteria have long developed resistance against medicines designed to fight them, rendering many drugs useless.
This has been accelerated by the massive use of antibiotics to treat humans, animals and food.
Antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) superbugs directly cause more than 1 million deaths and contribute to nearly 5 million deaths every year, the WHO said.
In a report on AMR surveillance, the WHO examined resistance prevalence estimates across 22 antibiotics used to treat infections of the urinary and gastrointestinal tracts, the bloodstream and those used to treat gonorrhea.
In the five years leading to up 2023, antibiotic resistance increased in more than 40 percent of the monitored antibiotics, with an average annual rise of between 5 and 15 percent, the report found.
For urinary tract infections, resistance to antibiotics was typically higher than 30 percent globally, it showed.
The report looked at eight common bacteria pathogens, including Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, which can lead to severe bloodstream infections that frequently result in sepsis, organ failure and death.
The WHO warned that more than 40 percent of E coli infections and 55 percent of K pneumoniae infections globally are now resistant to third-generation cephalosporins — the first-choice treatment for these infections.
“Antimicrobial resistance is outpacing advances in modern medicine, threatening the health of families,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
The WHO hailed improvements in surveillance, but warned that 48 percent of nations were still not reporting any AMR data.
“We are definitely flying blind in a number of countries and regions that have insufficient surveillance systems for antimicrobial resistance,” Hutin said.
Judging from the available data, most resistance was found in places with weaker health systems and less surveillance, the WHO said.
The highest resistance was found in the Southeast Asian and eastern Mediterranean regions, where one in three reported infections were resistant.
In Africa, one in five infections was resistant.
Silvia Bertagnolio, who heads the WHO unit for antimicrobial resistance surveillance, told reporters that it was unsurprising that resistance would be higher in places with weaker health systems, since they might lack the capacity to diagnose or treat pathogens effectively.
The WHO has warned that there are not enough new tests and treatments in the pipeline to tackle the spread of drug-resistant bacteria.
This is creating a significant “future threat,” Hutin said.
“The increasing antibiotic use, the increasing resistance and the reduction of the pipeline is a very dangerous combination,” he said.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
RSS