Superbugs could kill 10m a year, cost $100 trillion

There has not been a new class of antibiotics in 25 years because pharma companies see little profit in developing new drugs.

LONDON — Drug-resistant superbugs could kill an extra 10 million people a year and cost up to $100 trillion by 2050 if their rampant global spread is not halted, according to a British government-commissioned review.
Such infections already kill hundreds of thousands of people a year and the trend is growing, the review said. Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill, who led the work, noted that in Europe and the United States alone around 50,000 people currently die each year from infections caused by superbug forms of bacteria such as E.coli.
The review of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is based on analysis by two sets of researchers, RAND and KPMG, estimating the future impact of AMR under different scenarios for six common infections — three bacterial infections, plus malaria, HIV and tuberculosis.

But it excludes indirect effects of growing drug resistance which could “cast medicine back to the dark ages”, the review said, by making routine procedures more dangerous.
The problem posed by infections developing resistance to such drugs has been a feature of medicine since Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin, in Britain in 1928. But it has worsened in recent years as multi-drug-resistant bugs have been developed and drug companies have reduced investment in an unprofitable field. — AFP

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