Global health officials have repeatedly warned about the rise of drug-resistant bacteria and other microbes due to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages microorganisms to evolve into “superbugs”.
Last year, the World Health Organisation warned that none of the 43 antibiotics in development or recently approved medicines were enough to combat antimicrobial resistance. “The traditional antibiotic model that we’ve had for past number of decades since penicillin. I think it is tapped out.” AMR’s impact is now most severe in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, while around one in five deaths is in children aged under five years.