A study published in The Lancet shows that at least 1.27 million people died due to drug-resistant bacterial infections in 2019.

Researchers looked at data from the current scientific literature on antimicrobial resistance and included 471 million individual records in the analyses. It was estimated that 4.95 million deaths were associated with bacterial antimicrobial drug resistance in 2019 globally. Of 21 regions, Australasia was reported to have the lowest burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019, with 6.5 deaths per 100,000 individuals directly attributable to resistance and 28 deaths per 100,000 that could be associated with resistance. Out of the 23 pathogens studied, six were responsible for 73.4% of deaths attributable to bacterial antimicrobial resistance. These included Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. E. coli was accountable for the most deaths in 2019 among deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance. These six pathogens accounted for 929,000 of the 1.27 million deaths directly attributable to antimicrobial resistance and 3.57 million of the 4.95 million deaths linked with antimicrobial resistance globally… (CNN, January 20, 2022)