'Drug-resistant infections can kill an extra 10 mn a year'

Drug-resistant infections could lead to 10 million extra deaths a year and cost the global economy up to $100 trillion by 2050, according to a study commissioned by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The figures published Thursday were believed to be the first to quantify the potential impact of anti-microbial resistance (AMR), or drug-resistant infections, The Guardian reported.

To put the figures in context, 8.2 million deaths are known to occur every year as a result of cancer and the annual global GDP stands at $70-75 trillion, with Britain's GDP being around $3 trillion.

Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill, who chaired the study, said AMR represents a more certain threat than climate change in the short-term.

"We cannot allow these projections to materialise for any of us, especially our fellow citizens in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey), and our ambition is to search for bold, clear and practical long-term solutions," he said.

The report acknowledges that the human impact should be enough to prompt major intervention, but says that economic figures illustrate that the issue "transcends health policy".

Experts at KPMG and RAND Europe, who were commissioned by the review, looked at three bacteria -- "K pneumoniae", "E coli" and "Staphylococcus aureus" -- out of a group of seven highlighted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), as already showing concerning resistance levels.

They also examined HIV, tuberculosis and malaria as broader public health issues for which resistance is a concern.

No country is considered immune to the threat, but for some regions and nations the outlook is particularly bleak, according to the report.

The world's most populous countries, India and China, face two million and one million deaths a year respectively by 2050 and one in every four deaths in Nigeria by then is forecast to be attributable to AMR. Africa as a continent "will suffer greatly", the report warns.

A "low estimate" of the current number of annual global deaths is put at 700,000.

O'Neill said of the $100 trillion figure, $15 trillion is from Europe: "As big as that number seems, it almost definitely underestimates the economic cost."

Despite the grim prognosis, O'Neill said that there would be hope if international consensus was reached and if there were advances in diagnostics, stimulating the development of new AMR drugs and alternative therapies such as vaccines.

Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, said: "This is a compelling piece of work, which takes us a step forward in understanding the true gravity of the threat. It demonstrates that the world simply cannot afford not to take action."