1 May 2025 

Nearly a million people are dying in India each year from drug-resistant infections, many of which go untreated due to lack of access to the right antibiotics. A new study1 lays bare the scale of the problem, revealing that in 2019, just 7.8% of people in India received appropriate treatment for life-threatening carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative (CRGN) bacterial infections.

The study, led by researchers from the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP) and academic collaborators, is the first to quantify the treatment gap for antimicrobial-resistant infections in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Drawing on mortality data and pharmaceutical sales figures from India and seven other LMICs, the team estimated that there were more than a million CRGN infections in India in 2019, but only 83,468 courses of suitable antibiotics administered.