More deaths, fewer joint replacements, huge costs: The superbug crisis is already here, report warns AntibioticResistance
Hundreds of thousands of lives lost from infections that have been treatable for the last century. Fewer organ transplants and joint replacements because they’re just too risky to perform. Stigma against “carriers” or “the infected.” A shrinking economy.
Already, 26 per cent of bacterial infections in Canada are resistant to the first-line drugs generally used to treat them, according to the panel’s estimates. Overall, the panel estimates drug resistance reduced Canada’s GDP by $2 billion in 2018. If the resistance rate reaches 40 per cent, the GDP would fall by $21 billion per year.
After the heydays of the 1980s, drug companies are no longer investing in finding new antibiotics, because it’s largely a whack-a-mole game. “As soon as you make an antibiotic, everyone uses it, bugs become resistant and it’s no longer useful,” Finlay said. “You could imagine that daycares might not be so popular; everything that involves a social gathering might be perceived as risky,” she said.
“We need to move the agenda forward and not be thinking that it’s 50, 80 or 100 years out,” said University of Calgary infectious disease physician and panel member Dr. John Conly. The report includes some rather terrifying scenarios if we were to truly return to the pre-antibiotic era. Doctors might be forced to use toxic drugs, “or, if possible, removal of the source of infection .”
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