More than three million children around the world are thought to have died in 2022 as a result of infections that are resistant to antibiotics, according to a study by two leading experts in child health.
Children in Africa and South East Asia were found to be most at risk.
Antimicrobial resistance – known as AMR – develops when the microbes that cause infections evolve in such a way that antibiotic drugs no longer work.
It has been identified as one of the biggest public health threats facing the world’s population.
A new study now reveals the toll that AMR is taking on children.
Using data from multiple sources, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, the report’s authors have calculated there were more than three million child deaths in 2022 linked to drug-resistant infections.
Experts say this new study highlights a more than tenfold increase in AMR-related infections in children in just three years.
The number could have been made worse by the impact of the Covid pandemic.
Increased use of antibiotics
Antibiotics are used to treat or prevent a huge range of bacterial infections – everything from skin infections to pneumonia.
They are also sometimes given as a precaution to prevent, rather than treat, an infection – for example if someone is having an operation or receiving chemotherapy treatment for cancer.
Antibiotics have no impact on viral infections, though – illnesses such as the common cold, flu or Covid.
But some bacteria have now evolved resistance to some drugs, due to their overuse and inappropriate use, while the production of new antibiotics – a lengthy and costly process – has slowed right down.
The report’s lead authors, Doctor Yanhong Jessika Hu of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia and Professor Herb Harwell of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, point to a significant growth in the use of antibiotics that are meant to only be held back for the most serious infections.
Between 2019 and 2021 the use of “watch antibiotics”, drugs with a high risk of resistance, increased by 160% in South East Asia and 126% in Africa.
Over the same period, “reserve antibiotics” – last-resort treatments for severe, multidrug-resistant infections – rose by 45% in South East Asia and 125% in Africa.
By: Dominic Hughes, Global health correspondent, BBC