Antimicrobial Resistance: What’s at Stake and What Are We Doing About It?
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-4-2022
ISSN
1544-5208
Publisher
Project HOPE
Language
en-US
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a direct threat to our health and wealth. It is also a warning of the public health and economic crises awaiting if we do not address the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Nearly 700,000 deaths per year worldwide are attributed to AMR, with a potential annual loss of up to $3.4 trillion by 2030. After the conference, the comprehensive GRAM study was released in the Lancet, attributing 1.27 million deaths in 2019 to drug-resistant bacteria. In a post-antimicrobial era, today’s routine medical and surgical procedures would become a game of Russian roulette.
Resistance occurs when microorganisms undergo changes that render medicines used to treat them ineffective, leaving patients vulnerable to illness, adverse events, or death. Physicians need new drugs to treat patients with resistant infections but also need to preserve the effectiveness of existing antibiotics. There are several established contributors to resistance including agricultural misuse, environmental pollution and poor pollution controls during production, clinician overprescription of existing medicines to meet patient demand, and patient nonadherence to established treatment protocols.
Recommended Citation
Kevin Outterson, Helen Boucher, Aleks Engel, Rena M. Conti & Gabriela Gracia,
Antimicrobial Resistance: What’s at Stake and What Are We Doing About It?
,
in
Health Affairs
(2022).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3981
