Why this matters to everyone
Antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines are the foundation of modern medicine. They make routine surgery, chemotherapy, organ transplants, caesarean sections and the treatment of everyday infections safe. When microbes become resistant, common infections become hard — sometimes impossible — to treat, and the safety net underneath much of modern healthcare begins to unravel.
This is not a distant, hypothetical threat. Drug-resistant bacterial infections were directly responsible for an estimated 1.27 million deaths in 2019 and played a role in almost five million more — a toll higher than HIV/AIDS or malaria in the same year. Without stronger action, cumulative deaths are forecast to exceed 39 million between 2025 and 2050.
What you will find on this site
This site walks through the problem from first principles to solutions, in ten pages. You can read it front to back using the “next” links at the bottom of each page, or jump straight to a topic below.
The Science of Resistance
What antimicrobials are, how resistance arises through evolution, and the molecular tricks bacteria use to survive our drugs.
Page 3A Brief History
From Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928 and his early warning, through the golden age of antibiotics, to today's discovery drought.
Page 4Causes & Drivers
Overuse in human medicine, massive use in livestock farming, poor sanitation, environmental pollution and a broken market for new drugs.
Page 5AMR Today: The Numbers
The current global burden — deaths, regional differences, and how AMR compares with other major killers.
Page 6The Outlook to 2050
What the latest forecasts say about deaths, healthcare costs and economic damage if current trends continue — and what could be saved.
Page 7Superbugs to Watch
The WHO's 2024 priority pathogen list: the resistant bacteria and fungi that most urgently need new treatments.
Page 8The Global Response
What governments and international bodies are doing: the UN political declaration, WHO action plans, surveillance and One Health.
Page 9Innovation & New Treatments
The antibiotic pipeline, phage therapy, vaccines, AI-driven drug discovery, and new ways to pay for the medicines we need.
Page 10What You Can Do
Practical steps for patients, health workers, farmers and policymakers — plus sources and further reading.
Key terms in one minute
- Antimicrobials — medicines that kill or inhibit microorganisms: antibiotics (against bacteria), antivirals, antifungals and antiparasitics.
- Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) — when microbes change over time so that these medicines stop working. The microbes become resistant, not the person.
- Antibiotic resistance — the largest and most urgent slice of the AMR problem, concerning bacteria.
- Superbug — informal name for a microbe resistant to several (or all) of the drugs normally used against it.
A note on the numbers used on this site
Figures come from peer-reviewed research — chiefly the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project studies published in The Lancet (2022 and 2024) — and from the World Health Organization, the UN, the World Bank and the US CDC. Each page lists its sources at the bottom. This site is educational and is not medical advice.
Sources for this page
- Murray et al., “Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis”, The Lancet, 2022 — thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02724-0/fulltext
- GBD 2021 Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators, “Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with forecasts to 2050”, The Lancet, 2024 — thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01867-1/fulltext
- WHO fact sheet, “Antimicrobial resistance” — who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial-resistance