“[Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)] is a huge health challenge,” said Helen E. Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand, at the January 2024, Davos session, “Bad bugs no drugs: Facing a world without antibiotics.” “I think the lay public would be astonished to learn that it’s rated now as the third-leading cause of death. That makes it obviously appear extremely serious to us,” she said. In her remarks, Clark was referring to findings in a study led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) entitled “Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis,” which was published in The Lancet in 2022. The study estimated that approximately 4.95 million deaths were associated with antibiotic-resistant infections.
“AMR has the potential to roll back the gains we’ve made in children’s health,” she said, emphasizing the seriousness of the threat. Clark is chairing the Lancet Countdown High-Level Advisory Board on Health and Climate Change.
Dr. Shyam Bishen, the head of the Centre for Health and Healthcare at the World Economic Forum, also cited estimates from the same IHME-led study while introducing the session. “Every year, about 1.3 million people are killed from AMR, and I’m talking about direct impact of AMR,” Dr. Bishen said, referencing the number of deaths that IHME researchers and their collaborators at the University of Oxford attributed directly to AMR.
“It’s something that we need to take very seriously. People have been working on it, but we need more focus on this. We need more resources on this. And that is why we are here today,” stressed Dr. Bishen.
During the session, Peter Sands, the Executive Director of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, underscored the urgency of tackling AMR before the situation spirals out of control: “We have to acknowledge that the global community is really bad at dealing with creeping problems.... We’re much better at having a blazing fire and marshalling the fire engines.... By the time [AMR] becomes a blazing fire, it’s going to be really, really, really dangerous.”
While raising concerns about the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant infections, the panelists also expressed hopes that world leaders would work together to address this challenge. In September 2024, the United Nations will hold its second-ever high-level meeting focused on antimicrobial resistance.
