A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The World Health Organization says a pillar of modern medicine is weakening. Antibiotics cure deadly infections and make medical care like surgery safer, but bacteria are evolving resistance to antibiotics faster than previously thought, NPR's Jonathan Lambert explains.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: Antibiotics are really good at killing bacteria, but they're not perfect. In part, that's because bacteria vary in their vulnerability to antibiotics. Out of the billions of bacteria causing an infection, some just so happen to be naturally resistant. Here's Kevin Ikuta, an infectious disease physician at UCLA.
KEVIN IKUTA: Antimicrobial resistance is just basic evolution.
LAMBERT: When doctors treat an infection with antibiotics, it wipes out the susceptible bugs. That clears the field for any resistant bacteria to spread. Overusing antibiotics when they're not needed can breed resistance, too.
IKUTA: We are kind of in this battle that we're trying to lose as slowly as possible.
LAMBERT: A new WHO report suggests humans are losing ground. In 2023, roughly 1 in 6 infections tested in labs around the world were resistant to antibiotic treatments. Nearly half of all tested pathogens saw increased resistance since 2018. Here's Ramanan Laxminarayan, president at the One Health Trust, a nonprofit.
RAMANAN LAXMINARAYAN: Frankly, it's quite concerning. I mean, we do see increases in resistance every year, but here we see a pretty sharp increase.
LAMBERT: Some regions are seeing more resistance than others. The report found that resistance was generally worse in lower-income countries and those with weaker health systems.
LAXMINARAYAN: For some of the most common infections that afflict tropical countries, nearly 50% to 60% of the infections are now drug-resistant.
LAMBERT: These higher numbers could reflect countries only testing cases likely to be resistant. But they could also reflect genuinely higher resistance, stoked by poor health systems that can't get antibiotics to those who need them. More sophisticated antibiotics that could treat resistant infections are often out of reach.
LAXMINARAYAN: So you see, simultaneously, the antibiotics are no longer working, but the antibiotics that do work are not available. And that is extremely worrying.
LAMBERT: Over a million people already die each year from resistant infections. Without new antibiotics and better access to existing ones, that toll could grow.
LAXMINARAYAN: We're sleepwalking into a disaster. I shouldn't say we are. I mean, we already have sleepwalked into a disaster.
LAMBERT: Jonathan Lambert, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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