World Antibiotic Awareness Week is a global campaign – celebrated this year from 18 to 24 November – to raise awareness of antibiotic resistance, and encourage best practices among the general public, health care workers and policy-makers to avoid the further emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance.
Antimicrobial resistance is a global crisis that threatens a century of progress in health, poses a formidable challenge to achieving universal health coverage and threatens to undermine progress to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the targets of which include promoting good health and well-being.
Alarming levels of resistance have been reported in countries at all levels of income, with the result that common diseases caused by either bacteria, viruses or fungi are becoming untreatable, and lifesaving medical procedures, such as caesarean section, hip replacements and others, are becoming riskier to perform. A growing list of infectious diseases, including pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and foodborne diseases, are also becoming harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat.
Antimicrobial resistance causes an estimated 700 000 deaths globally, each year. By 2050, if left unaddressed, that number is projected to rise to 10 million, while the cumulative costs to both patients and health systems across the globe are expected to reach US$ 100 trillion.