'Superbugs' could cost US$100 trillion and millions of lives globally by 2050

Drug-resistant infections - or "superbugs" – could claim 10 million lives a year and could cost a cumulative US$100 trillion of economic output by 2050 if the world does not act to slow down the rise of drug resistance, a new report warned.

According to a global review on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), drug-resistant infections are "one of the biggest health threats that mankind currently faces" and there are fears of pandemics becoming more of a norm as antibiotics lose their efficacy.

The review was chaired by economist Jim O'Neill and he warned in the report that the world was already witnessing the alarming rise of "superbugs" that doctors are powerless to prevent or cure.

"The magnitude of the problem is now accepted," O'Neill said in a summary of the report which comes after 19 months of consultations and eight interim papers on the subject.

"Even today, 700,000 people die of resistant infections every year. Antibiotics are a special category of antimicrobial drugs that underpin modern medicine as we know it: if they lose their effectiveness, key medical procedures (such as gut surgery, caesarean sections, joint replacements, and treatments that depress the immune system, such as chemotherapy for cancer) could become too dangerous to perform. Most of the direct and much of the indirect impact of AMR will fall on low and middle-income countries," he said.

O'Neill said that it was fair to assume, at current rates, that over one million people had died since his review had started in 2014. He called that "truly shocking" and said that as well as the "tragic human costs," AMR had a "very real economic cost, which will continue to grow if resistance is not tackled."