A major public health concern

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and even death.

As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat.

The emergence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens that have acquired new resistance mechanisms, leading to AMR, continue to threaten our ability to treat common infections.

Especially alarming is the rapid global spread of multi- and pan-resistant bacteria (also known as “superbugs”) that cause infections that are not treatable with existing antimicrobial medicines such as antibiotics.

The clinical pipeline of new antimicrobials is dry. In 2019, WHO identified 32 antibiotics in clinical development that address its list of priority pathogens, of which only six were classified as innovative.

Furthermore, a lack of access to quality antimicrobials remains a major issue. Antibiotic shortages are affecting countries of all levels of development and especially in healthcare systems.

Antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective as drug resistance is spreading globally and it’s becoming more difficult to treat infections and death. New antibacterials are urgently needed — for example, to treat carbapenem-resistant gram-negative bacterial infections as identified in the WHO priority pathogen list.

However, if people do not change the way antibiotics are used now, these new antibiotics will suffer the same fate as the current ones and become ineffective.

Without effective tools for the prevention and adequate treatment of drug-resistant infections and improved access to existing and new quality-assured antimicrobials, the number of people for whom treatment is failing or who die of infections will increase.

Medical procedures, such as surgery, including caesarean sections or hip replacements, cancer chemotherapy, and organ transplantation, will become riskier.

Recent reports suggest that AMR kills almost 50,000 people worldwide in a year. This situation will continue to get worse every year and more people will die because of AMR.

AMR is caused by the overuse and misuse of antimicrobial drugs, which include antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and antiparasitic drugs. These drugs are commonly prescribed for the treatment of infections caused by microorganisms.

However, many people mistakenly believe that these drugs can cure any type of infection, including those caused by viruses such as the flu. This leads to the unnecessary use of antimicrobial drugs, which creates an environment in which microorganisms can evolve and develop resistance.

In addition to overuse, antimicrobial drugs are often used in agriculture and animal husbandry to promote growth and prevent disease in animals. This practice can also lead to the development of AMR in animals, which can then spread to humans through the food supply chain.

The consequences of AMR are severe. Infections that were once easily treated with antimicrobial drugs, such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, and HIV, are becoming more difficult to cure. This means that patients may require longer hospital stays and more intensive treatments. They may even die from infections that were once easily treatable.

AMR is also a major economic burden. Healthcare costs for treating AMR infections are significantly higher than for treating infections that can be cured with antimicrobial drugs.

In addition, patients with AMR infections may require longer hospital stays, which can lead to lost productivity and higher healthcare costs.

To address this problem, it is important to reduce the overuse and misuse of antimicrobial drugs. Healthcare providers should only prescribe these drugs when they are necessary and ensure that patients complete the full course of treatment.

Patients should also be educated about the appropriate use of these drugs and the importance of completing the full course of treatment.

The writer is a postgraduate student at the Microbiology and Parasitology Department at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University