Resistance to antibiotics led to at least one million deaths each year since 1990, with increasing rates of drug-resistant infections expected to claim more than 39 million lives between now and 2050 without further policy action, according to a landmark study by the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project.
Published in the Lancet, ‘Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with forecasts to 2050’, is the first comprehensive analysis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) trends over time. GRAM, a partnership between the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Oxford, shows in the study that AMR has already claimed more than 36 million lives since 1990, with a death toll that is set to rise dramatically in future years.