Antimicrobial resistance: Why our medicines may stop working

euronews (in English)

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]

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