As if the threat from cancer, dementia and heart disease wasn’t enough, the world’s older inhabitants face a new danger. It’s our old friend antibiotic resistance-and it’s growing fast. That’s according to Kat Lay of the Guardian,[1] who has produced a fascinating review of the work of the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance Project.[2.3} They looked at data from 204 countries from 1990 to 2021, and have projected their findings forwards into the 2050s.
Young people will suffer from the problem it’s true. But their overall death rate from infections has been falling, partly from the success of things like improved hygiene and vaccination problems. It’s among the elderly that the situation gets bleak. Their death rates from antibiotic resistant organisms have skyrocketed by 80% over the last three decades. The authors estiamte by 2050 this demographic will be suffering 1.3 million deaths per year directly from resistant organism infections. And the resistance will be implicated, at least in part in a further 8.2 million annual deaths. Readers of LSS will observe, wearily, that every one of them will be avoidable.
So, what to say after all these years of blogging? After reporting on the work of so many fine researchers, and thanking so many fine journalists like Kat, and all her colleagues who labour tirelessly to keep this problem on the public eye? The fact that people are more aware of all this than when we started back in ’15 is something. And there have been signs of progress, as we have sometimes noted here. Keep people aware, readers. If you see a journalist who has raised it, try to find a way to thank them. Keep giving money to the charities who are trying to do something about it.[4] And, as with many things-don’t stop hoping
[2]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01867-1/fulltext
[3]https://www.tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk/gram
[4]https://www.antibioticresearch.org.uk/
#antibiotic resistance #medicine #health #hospital #2050
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