Antibiotic Resistance Accelerates

Even before the pandemic there were health care worries. Resistance to antibiotics was rising as the contagions gained immunities. Part of the problem was simple evolution, though heightened by misuse of the treatments.

“…in 2019, about 1.27 million people died directly due to antimicrobial resistance…” – Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) project

For comparison,

“…AMR is now among the leading causes of death worldwide, exceeding the toll of HIV/AIDS and malaria (864,000 and 643,000 deaths in 2019 respectively…” – Lancet’s Global Burden of Disease study

Unfortunately,

“…a single successful antibiotic costs $1.5 billion to bring to market, whereas the expected annual revenue per drug is less than $50 million per year.” – Vox

So, a crisis is developing and extending existing treatment methods may be unprofitable. Novel approaches to treatments need to be developed, but by definition, novel approaches include more risk and greater attention from regulatory agencies.

“Without radical change to antibiotic use practices, drug-resistant pathogens, which at that point were estimated to cause 700,000 deaths globally every year, could kill 10 million people per year by 2050.” – Vox