The Week: India Leads In Averting Antibiotic Apocalypse
India Leading The Way In Averting Antibiotic Apocalypse
The Week, Suryaprabha Sadasivan, 29 February 2020
(Image courtesy of The Week)
The discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Alexander Fleming opened new frontiers in healthcare revolution. Since its discovery, it is estimated that penicillin alone has saved around 200 million lives and over these years, more than 100 new antibiotics have been discovered as a result of which mortality due to infections has seen a steady decline.
In 1945, while collecting the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work, Fleming shared his vision as a cautionary tale and warned that misuse of the drug could result in selection for resistant bacteria. Little did we realise that true to his prediction, today antimicrobial resistance (AMR) would become one of the most life-threatening health emergencies in the world. It is estimated that as of 2014, 700,000 people died due to AMR annually. A UK government review estimated that by 2050, AMR could be causing 10 million deaths a year. Back home in India, according to a 2019 estimate, about 2 million people may die of antimicrobial resistance by 2050.
