Antimicrobial resistance: Why our medicines may stop working
Antibiotics have been called 'wonder drugs' - but can they survive a new wave of superbugs? Euronews explains.
Transcript
00:00 A world in which the drugs don't work is a threat to global health security.
00:04 In 2019, the World Health Organization declared antimicrobial resistance
00:11 one of the top 10 public health threats facing humanity.
00:15 That year, drug-resistant infections killed at least 1.27 million people worldwide.
00:22 And if resistance continues to grow,
00:26 this figure could rise to 10 million deaths a year by 2050.
00:30 That's as many as the current number of people dying from cancer.
00:34 But how did we get there?
00:36 Edward Monet, Charles Baudelaire, Guy de Maupassant, and Gaetano Donizetti
00:50 have something in common.
00:51 They all died of complications from syphilis,
00:55 a sexually transmitted infection caused by bacteria.
00:58 But in 1928, everything changed thanks to a revolutionary discovery.
01:04 Penicillin, one of the first antibiotics in the world.
01:08 Since then, hundreds of antimicrobial drugs have been developed to treat infections
01:14 caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites in humans, animals, and plants.
01:22 They have saved countless lives around the world.
01:25 But now, their ethics see is at risk.
01:28 Many of the microbes have evolved to be resistant and have become superbugs.
01:48 This is making infections increasingly difficult, if not impossible to treat,
01:53 threatening modern medicine as a whole.
01:55 Without effective antimicrobial drugs, medical procedures such as organ transplants,
02:02 chemotherapy, and surgeries like C-sections will become riskier.
02:07 But what's behind the spread of superbugs?
02:11 The main causes are the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials.
02:17 But that's not the full story.
02:19 Pollution, a lack of clean water, sanitation, and hygiene,
02:24 poor access to medicines, vaccines, and diagnoses,
02:29 and insufficient prevention measures in health care facilities and farms
02:33 all create breeding grounds for resistance.
02:36 In 2022, the European Commission set antimicrobial resistance
02:42 as one of the top three health threats.
02:44 [Spanish]
03:01 And the loss is not only human, but also economic.
03:05 Antimicrobial resistance costs the European Union
03:09 more than 1.5 billion euros in health care fees and productivity losses.
03:14 That's because people suffering from these infections
03:18 have to stay longer in hospitals and need more expensive medicines.
03:23 Globally, if the situation isn't tackled,
03:27 the cost to the economy could reach about 95 trillion euros by 2050.
03:33 In the next decade, 24 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty.
03:39 And because of some of the risk factors we mentioned earlier,
03:42 low- and middle-income countries tend to be more affected.
03:46 To address the issue, more innovation and investment in drug development are needed.
03:52 In 2017, the World Health Organization published a list
03:58 of antibiotic-resistant priority pathogens,
04:01 a catalog of 12 families of bacteria.
04:06 The organization has warned that there are currently
04:09 too few antibiotics in the pipeline to tackle them.
04:12 But even if we manage to develop new bug killers,
04:17 their efficacy could be compromised if we don't change the way we use them.
04:22 Without rethinking the world's habits,
04:24 these fresh meds could end up facing the same fate as the ones we've got now.
04:29 [Music]