Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest world public health threats; In 2021 it caused 1.4 million deaths – especially in average and low -income countries – and is expected to be two million in 2050.
A new study led by scientists from the Sun Yat-Sen University of Guangzhou (China) and published in Nature Medicine Vaticin that, if things do not change, the worldwide charge of these resistance will grow 2.4 percent before the middle of the century.
Resistance to antimicrobials arises when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites mutate and become immune to medications, that hinders the treatment of infections, increases the risk of propagation of diseases and favors the appearance of more serious diseases of disease.
For all these reasons, without effective antimicrobials, global health is compromised in such essential situations as surgeries or cancer chemotherapy treatments, for example.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), addressing this global problem requires urgent multisectoral measures, such as reducing the improper use of antibiotics, or control measures against infections such as promoting access to clean water and sanitation.
But climate change and breach of sustainable development strategies are accelerating this global health problem.
Increase strategies
The world leaders of the 79th General Assembly of the United Nations issued a statement committing to reduce the 4.95 million human deaths related to bacterial resistance in the world by 10 percent by 2030.
However, much of the strategy has focused on correcting the excessive use of antibiotics, leaving aside other issues related to climate change and socio -economic conditions.
The team, led by Lianping Yang, of the Sun Yat-Sen University, wanted to evaluate the impact of the socio-economic and environmental factors of the bacterial resistance and, for this, they analyzed 4,502 records that covered 32 million isolated of 6 bacterial pathogens resistant to antimicrobial, obtained from 101 countries between 1999 and 2022.
Using forecast models, the authors investigated how socio -economic and environmental factors and policies in world trends in antimicrobial resistance would influence.
Their conclusions suggest that in the worst of the climate change adaptation scenarios, in which world temperatures would increase between 4 and 5 ° C at the end of the century, resistance to antimicrobials could increase 2.4 percent from here to 2050, compared to the low emissions scenario.
The figure ranges from 0.9 percent in high-income countries and 4.1 percent and 3.3 percent in medium-low and low income, respectively.
Scientists also discovered that sustainable development efforts, such as the reduction of direct health expenses, the extension of immunization coverage, the increase in health investments and the guarantee of universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene services, could reduce the future prevalence of antimicrobial resistance by 5.1 percent.
This would exceed the effect of reducing antimicrobial consumption, which, according to projections, would decrease the prevalence of resistances by 2.1 percent.
In view of this data, the authors call urgent action to address broader socio -economic and environmental factors beyond the simple reduction in the use of antibiotics to mitigate this serious problem.
With EFE information.
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