Antimicrobial resistance is becoming prevalent attributable to climate change and other environmental aspects, based on a report from the United Nations Environment Programme. 

The leading environmental authority within the United Nations system recently published a report entitled “Bracing for Superbugs: Strengthening environmental motion within the One Health response to antimicrobial resistance.” In it, the organization provided evidence that the environment plays a key role in the event and transmission of superbugs. 

Antimicrobial resistance or AMR refers back to the phenomenon when germs, akin to bacteria, viruses and fungi, develop the flexibility to withstand, defeat or evade the medications designed to kill them. 

“The event and spread of AMR signifies that antimicrobials used to forestall and treat infections in humans, animals and plants might turn ineffective, with modern medicine not in a position to treat even mild infections,” the organization said, as per CNN. 

Cleansing products, plant pesticides and medications with antimicrobials are designed to kill and forestall the spread of bacteria, viruses and fungi amongst people, animals, crops and objects. But when the germs develop antimicrobial resistance, the products wouldn’t be effective against them. 

In 2019, an estimated 5 million deaths worldwide were linked to antimicrobial resistance. The annual death toll is predicted to extend to 10 million by 2050 unless steps are taken to counter this phenomenon. 

While experts recognize that the overuse of antimicrobials in people, animals and food production contributed to the rise in superbugs, they found growing evidence that environmental aspects play a giant role in the event, transmission and spread of those superbugs. 

“The identical drivers that cause environmental degradation are worsening the antimicrobial resistance problem. The impacts of antimicrobial resistance could destroy our health and food systems,” Inger Andersen, the UN Environment Programme’s executive director, said on the Sixth Meeting of the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance in Barbados on Tuesday. 

UN’s One Health, an integrated, unifying approach that seeks to sustainably balance and optimize the health of individuals, animals and ecosystems, goals to assist reduce the chance and burden of AMR on societies by spreading awareness on how the health of individuals, animals, plants and the environment are interdependent. 

“Climate change, pollution, changes in our weather patterns, more rainfall, more closely packed, dense cities and concrete areas – all of this facilitates the spread of antibiotic resistance. And I’m certain that this is simply going to go up with time unless we take relatively drastic measures to curb this,” Dr. Scott Roberts, an infectious disease specialist at Yale School of Medicine, who was not involved within the UN report, told CNN.