Sneha Kemka

Superbugs: Avoiding an Existential Threat to Humanity

Esther Krofah, Valeria Bortolaia, Ron Daniels, Peter Jackson, Peter Piot, Lance Price, Sneha Kemka

This analysis details the critical global escalation of antimicrobial resistance, which currently causes 700,000 annual deaths and threatens to reach 10 million by 2050 without urgent intervention. The event highlights a pharmaceutical market failure where major drug withdrawals have shifted innovation to undercapitalized SMEs, necessitating new economic incentives like the UK's pilot pull mechanism to fund R&D. Strategic solutions prioritize infection control, agricultural bans on growth promoters, and precision diagnostics to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and clinical application.