A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report has warned that one in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections causing common infections in people worldwide in 2023 were resistant to antibiotic treatments.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing threat to global health, undermining the effectiveness of life-saving treatments and posing a heightened risk for populations, whether from common infections or routine medical interventions.
Data collected by the WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) from 104 countries show that 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.
This report draws on more than 23 million bacteriologically confirmed cases of bloodstream infections, urinary tract infections, gastrointestinal infections, and urogenital gonorrhoea.
The report 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 report covers eight common bacterial pathogens.
Highest risk regions
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, one in five infections was resistant. The report added that resistance is more common and worsening in places where health systems lack capacity to diagnose or treat bacterial pathogens.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, commented: “Antimicrobial resistance is outpacing advances in modern medicine, threatening the health of families worldwide.
“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.”
The report provides adjusted global and regional estimates of AMR for 93 infection type–pathogen–antibiotic combinations, the adjusted national AMR estimates for 2023 for key pathogen–antibiotic combinations and tracks global and regional resistance trends for 16 combinations between 2018 and 2023.
The greatest threat
WHO said that Gram-negative bacterial pathogens are posing the greatest threat. Among these, E. coli and K. pneumoniae are the leading drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria found in bloodstream infections. These are among the most severe bacterial infections that often result in sepsis, organ failure, and death. Yet more than 40 per cent of E. coli and over 55 per cent of K. pneumoniae globally are now resistant to third-generation cephalosporins, the first-choice treatment for these infections.
In the African Region, resistance even exceeds 70 per cent.
E. Coli (Escherichia coli) is a bacteria commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms. Most E. coli strains are harmless, but some can cause serious food poisoning.
K. pneumoniae (Klebsiella pneumoniae) causes pneumonia, UTIs, wound infections and other illnesses. Klebsiella naturally lives in human gut and respiratory tract. It most often spreads from person to person or through contaminated medical devices.
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