Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with forecasts to 2050
Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses an important global health challenge in the 21st century. A previous study has quantified the global and regional burden of AMR for 2019, followed with additional publications that provided more detailed estimates for several WHO regions by country. To date, there have been no studies that produce comprehensive estimates of AMR burden across locations that encompass historical trends and future forecasts.
Introduction: In 2014, the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) projected that 10 million deaths caused by AMR could occur by 2050. This estimate, while the subject of scientific criticism, helped position AMR as one of the most pressing threats to health of the 21st century. In the years since, WHO committed to the 2015 AMR global action plan, AMR was the focus of a high-level UN general assembly in 2016, and an AMR-specific indicator was included as a Sustainable Development Goal: to reduce the percentage of bloodstream infection due to selected antimicrobial-resistant organisms (indicator 3.d.2). Despite the attention AMR has received at the global level, the implementation and funding of national action plans has been uneven, leading to uncertain progress in attenuating the burden of AMR.
GBD 2021 Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators: Mohsen Naghavi, Stein Emil Vollset, Kevin S Ikuta, Lucien R Swetschinski, Authia P Gray, Eve E Wool, Gisela Robles Aguilar, Tomislav Mestrovic, Georgia Smith, Chieh Han et al.