Superbugs could kill 10 million every year by 2050

As many as 10 million people a year will die of drug-resistant infections every year by 2050 if the problem is not addressed soon, concludes an alarming new report.

The analysis comes from British economist Jim O'Neill, who was appointed by British Prime Minister David Cameron this past summer to head a review into antimicrobial resistance.

The report concludes that drug resistance is a more certain and immediate threat to the planet than even climate change. The 10 million deaths a year would even exceed the 8.2 million deaths that are currently caused each year by cancer.

"The economic cost will also be significant, with the world economy being hit by up to $100 trillion by 2050 if we do not take action," O'Neill said in a statement.

The report's projections might even be an underestimate, the authors say, because antibiotic resistance will begin to affect all aspects of health care. Without effective antibiotics, even routine surgeries and medical procedures would become far more dangerous because of the high risk of infection, sending modern medicine back "to the dark ages," the report authors say.

O'Neill's team drafted the report based on scenarios modelled by researchers at Rand Europe and auditors KPMG, with input from several scientific experts.

They predict that no country will be immune from because antibiotic resistance, noting that many of the most worrisome infections, such as E. coli, affect both rich and poor countries.

In the case of E. coli, doctors regularly turn to a class of antibiotics called "carbapenems" when other antibiotics fail to work.

But in recent years, doctors have found themselves needing more and more carbapenems to treat infections, and now a strain of carbapenem-resistant E.coli has emerged and spread around the world.

For patients infected with that strain of E. coli, there are no longer any effective drugs available for them.

Other infections that present a large threat and could cause the largest impact include drug-resistant tuberculosis and malaria.

The report predicts that Africa will be particularly hard hit. In Nigeria, one in every four deaths could be attributable to antimicrobial resistance by 2050. India could face 2 million deaths a year by 2050, while China could see 1 million deaths just from bacterial infections that could not be cured.

Currently, drug resistant infections cause approximately 700,000 deaths a year.

The World Health Organization has highlighted the problem of drug resistance several times. In a report earlier this year, it warned that if the problem is not addressed, even minor infections could become regularly fatal.

It said that bacteria resistant to antibiotics have now been found in every part of the world, pointing to E. coli, pneumonia and gonorrhea.

O’Neill and his team are continuing their investigation and are now looking at what action can be taken to stem the problem. Some aspects they will look at include: