Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most serious threats to public health and modern healthcare, so much so that in Europe in 2019, it was associated with a significant increase in mortality.
A study published in the journal The Lancet Global Health and quoted by the Italian press, scientists from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine, the Oxford Center for Global Health Research, and the Center for Tropical Medicine and Global Health released estimates at the regional and national levels of deaths caused by antimicrobial resistance.
The study involved 78 specialists, examined 23 bacterial pathogens and 88 combinations of pathogens, using data collected in 53 European countries, all part of the World Health Organization. The aim of the survey was to assess the mortality associated with antimicrobial resistance. “Several previous studies,” experts say, “have highlighted some difficulties in assessing the scale of the problem and its impact on people’s health and mortality.”
Our study represents the most comprehensive set of regional and national estimates of the incidence of antimicrobial resistance in the WHO European regions.”
Thus, according to the analysis, there would have been more than one million deaths in 2019 linked to the 11 fatal infectious syndromes considered by the research team, with 0.9 million later linked to antibiotic-resistant bacterial agents.
“We counted 541,000 deaths associated with bacterial ARM,” the team reported, “and found that seven pathogens were thought to be responsible for approximately 457,000 deaths, with Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus among the most serious threats.”
The study also shows that in countries where action plans were in place to address the problem, the proportion of reported antimicrobial resistance was lower.
“The high level of resistance to various bacterial agents and combinations of pathogens and drugs,” the authors conclude, “underlines the fact that antimicrobial resistance is a serious challenge and a growing threat to public health. We hope that our work will stimulate the adoption of appropriate countermeasures. Among them, we offer, for example, the possibility of introducing an effective monitoring system, improving the level of hygiene and expanding access to vaccines.”
The material was made with the support of the Rador agency
Photo: Dreamstime
Source: Hot News RO
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