Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will wipe out USD 100 trillion from the global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050, said Saransh Chaudhary, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), VMRC and President, Global Critical Care, Venus Remedies.
Notably, antimicrobial resistance has been a source of concern since the 1940s when antibiotics were first employed to treat patients, but it is only recently that AMR has been recognised as a worldwide health hazard. Antibiotic use is expanding internationally, which is a major contributor to antibiotic resistance.
As per some reports, the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens present a significant challenge to policymakers and experts say that there is a need to oversee the transformation of healthcare systems that evolved to provide easy access to these drugs into those that encourage appropriate antimicrobial use while reducing the risk of resistance.
According to Chaudhary, antibiotic sustainability is not only necessary to achieve the third sustainability goal but is necessary for the achievement of all seventeen sustainable development goals.
He further said that the antibiotic is the lynchpin of sustainable healthcare and the rest of it like the effectiveness and availability of antibiotics which not only cure your infection but also underpin all of the medicine.
Antibiotics enable chemotherapy and enable all types of surgery, transplants and the development of antibiotics is the most significant development in the last 50 years, Chaudhry added.
While citing reports, Chaudhary stated that 4.95 million deaths are associated with bacterial resistance in 2019 and 1.27 million deaths are directly associated with it.