AMR outpacing advances in modern medicine, resistant infections rising in hospitals globally: WHO

New Delhi, Oct 13 (IANS) Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is rapidly outpacing advances in modern medicine, and resistant infections are rising in hospitals across the globe, said the World Health Organization (WHO) in a new report launched on Monday.

The report, based on data from 104 countries in 2023 and 110 countries between 2016 and 2023, showed that one in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections causing common infections in people worldwide in 2023 were resistant to antibiotic treatments.

Between 2018 and 2023, antibiotic resistance rose in over 40 per cent of the pathogen-antibiotic combinations monitored, with an average annual increase of 5-15 per cent.

“Antimicrobial resistance is outpacing advances in modern medicine, threatening the health of families worldwide,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

“As countries strengthen their AMR surveillance systems, we must use antibiotics responsibly and make sure everyone has access to the right medicines, quality-assured diagnostics, and vaccines. Our future also depends on strengthening systems to prevent, diagnose, and treat infections and on innovating with next-generation antibiotics and rapid point-of-care molecular tests,” he added.

Data reported to the WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) from over 100 countries cautions that increasing resistance to essential antibiotics poses a growing threat to global health.

The new Global Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance Report 2025 presents, for the first time, resistance prevalence estimates across 22 antibiotics used to treat infections of the urinary and gastrointestinal tracts, the bloodstream, and those used to treat gonorrhoea.

The WHO estimated that antibiotic resistance is highest in the WHO South-East Asian and Eastern Mediterranean Regions, where one in three reported infections were resistant. In the African Region, 1 in 5 infections was resistant.

Resistance is also more common and worsening in places where health systems lack the capacity to diagnose or treat bacterial pathogens, the report said.

“Essential life-saving antibiotics, including carbapenems and fluoroquinolones, are losing effectiveness against E. coli, K. pneumoniae, Salmonella, and Acinetobacter. Carbapenem resistance, once rare, is becoming more frequent, narrowing treatment options and forcing reliance on last-resort antibiotics. And such antibiotics are costly, difficult to access, and often unavailable in low- and middle-income countries,” the report said.

The WHO called on all countries to scale up coordinated interventions designed to address antimicrobial resistance across all levels of healthcare and ensure that treatment guidelines and essential medicines lists align with local resistance patterns.

--IANS

rvt/