Across the world, the spread of dangerous infections that do not respond to antibiotics has been increasing by as much as 15 percent a year, affecting treatment for urinary tract infections, gonorrhea, E. coli and other pathogens that kill millions of people annually, according to a report released Monday by the World Health Organization.
The report documents how countries are grappling with the challenge of so-called antimicrobial resistance. It found that one in six infections in 2023 was resistant to the current roster of antibiotic drugs. The drug resistance involves 40 percent of the most common antibiotics used against these infections.
Southeast Asia and the eastern Mediterranean had the highest rates of resistance, with one in three infections resistant to antibiotics. That is roughly double the worldwide average and more three times the rates in Europe and the Western Pacific.
Overall, antimicrobial resistance was more prevalent in low- and middle-income countries, especially those with weak health care systems.
“Antibiotic resistance is widespread and threatening the future of modern medicine,” Dr. Yvan Hutin, director of the W.H.O.’s department of antimicrobial resistance, said in a news conference announcing the surveillance results. “Simply put, the less people have access to quality care, the more they’re likely to suffer from drug-resistant infection.”
Drug-resistant bacterial and fungal infections kill more than one million people around the world each year and contribute to the deaths of nearly five million others, according to the health agency’s estimates. A study published in The Lancet estimated that more than 39 million people would die from antibiotic-resistant infections in the next 25 years.
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