Drug-Resistant Infections Kill About One Million People a Year, WHO Warns — and the Toll Is Still Rising

BRUSSELS — Drug-resistant bacterial infections kill roughly one million people around the world every year — about two people every minute — the World Health Organization warned at the start of October 2026, saying the crisis can no longer be described as a "silent pandemic" and calling on governments to back their promises on antibiotics with laws, funding and accountability.

Illustration: A quiet hospital corridor with a doctor holding a clipboard, representing the growing burden of drug-resistant infections in health care.

What Happened

The warning came from Dr Jean-Pierre Nyemazi, acting director of the WHO Department of Antimicrobial Resistance, at a press conference in Brussels held to mark the exhibition "AMR: The Human Stories Behind a Silent Pandemic" at the European Parliament. The exhibition, organised by the WHO together with Member of the European Parliament Martin Häusling, ran from 28 September to 2 October 2026 and featured personal stories of people affected by antimicrobial resistance (AMR) across Europe.

"AMR is taking many lives. One million people die every year due to drug-resistant bacteria alone — that is, two people every minute die of bacterial AMR," Nyemazi said, according to reports of the press conference. He argued that the scale of the death toll means antimicrobial resistance should no longer be described as a silent pandemic: the threat, he said, has become too large and too visible to be treated as a hidden problem, and proven interventions already exist to prevent and control it.

Nyemazi also stressed that the damage goes far beyond the death toll. Resistant infections increase health care costs, prolong hospital stays, and can force family members to abandon their jobs to care for sick relatives. The human cost was illustrated at the event by Rob Purdie, an AMR survivor and member of the WHO Task Force of AMR Survivors, who recounted how a delayed diagnosis of a fungal infection eventually progressed to meningitis. Purdie said he spent about a quarter of a million dollars on hospital care and was unable to earn a living for about five years, leaving his family dependent on social safety nets — and that thirteen years later, he still has limited savings and cannot retire.

The WHO official set out what he said governments must now do: back national AMR commitments with legislation, financing and accountability, with parliamentarians playing a critical role in ensuring policies translate into action. He called for stronger prevention measures, including vaccination, infection prevention and control, water, sanitation and hygiene, improved animal husbandry, responsible antimicrobial use, better surveillance, access to quality medicines and diagnostics, and reduced environmental contamination. He also urged governments to strengthen primary health care so patients can obtain timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment instead of buying antibiotics directly from pharmacies, and to tighten enforcement of regulations prohibiting the sale of reserve antibiotics without prescriptions, including using technology to track medicines dispensed by pharmacies.

Background

Antimicrobial resistance happens when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve so that the medicines designed to kill them no longer work reliably. The WHO's October warning focused on bacterial resistance, but the broader problem covers all of these organisms. It does not mean every antibiotic has stopped working. It means treatment increasingly depends on which organism is causing an infection and which medicines remain active against it — and that the wrong choice, or no effective choice at all, can turn a once-routine infection into a prolonged, expensive and sometimes fatal illness.

Public health specialists have long warned that overuse of antibiotics in humans, animals and agriculture accelerates the emergence of resistant strains. Antibiotics are still prescribed when they are not needed, sold without prescriptions in many countries, used widely in livestock production, and released into waterways through farms, factories and hospitals. Resistant pathogens then move across borders and between humans, animals, food systems and the environment — which is why the WHO insists the response must follow a "One Health" approach that links human health, animal health and the environment, rather than treating hospitals alone.

The scale of the problem is documented in the WHO's own surveillance and fact-sheet figures, as reported in October 2026. According to the WHO, about one in six reported infections worldwide was resistant to the antibiotics used against it. The burden is uneven: in the South-East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean regions, about one in three reported infections was resistant, and in the African region about one in five. The WHO's fact sheet also notes that resistance to ciprofloxacin, a widely used antibiotic, in gonorrhoea stands at around 75 per cent. These are estimates drawn from reporting countries, not a complete census — surveillance itself remains patchy, a point the WHO has repeatedly emphasised.

The longer-term numbers are larger still. The WHO says bacterial antimicrobial resistance was associated with more than 4.7 million deaths worldwide in 2021 — a figure that counts deaths where resistance played a role, as opposed to the roughly one million deaths directly attributed to drug-resistant bacterial infections each year. It also projects that treating resistant bacterial infections will cost US$412 billion a year up to 2035, with a further US$443 billion a year in lost productivity. Those projections explain why the WHO frames AMR as an economic threat as much as a medical one: it drains health budgets, keeps workers out of work and pushes families toward financial hardship.

Illustration: A researcher examining a petri dish in a laboratory, representing the search for effective treatments against resistant bacteria.

Surveillance is improving, but from a low base. Participation in the WHO's Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) grew from 25 countries in 2016 to 104 in 2023, more than a four-fold increase. Even so, about 48 per cent of countries did not report data in 2023, and about half of reporting countries lacked systems to generate reliable data. The WHO has called on all countries to report high-quality resistance and antibiotic-use data by 2030 — without that baseline, it is hard to know where resistance is spreading fastest or whether interventions are working.

Against that background, WHO member states approved an updated Global Action Plan on AMR at the 2026 World Health Assembly, providing a ten-year framework centred on the One Health approach. The October press conference in Brussels was, in effect, a call to turn that framework into national law and spending: the plan exists, Nyemazi argued, but too many countries have not yet matched it with the legislation, financing and enforcement that would make it real.

Why It Matters

Antimicrobial resistance matters to almost everyone, even people who have never heard of it, because modern medicine leans heavily on effective antibiotics. Surgery, cancer chemotherapy, organ transplants, childbirth and the treatment of premature babies all become far riskier when infections cannot be controlled. If first-line antibiotics fail, doctors must turn to second- or third-line drugs that may be more toxic, more expensive or simply unavailable — and in the worst cases, there may be no effective drug left at all.

The burden falls hardest on the people and places with the fewest alternatives. Where diagnostics are scarce, patients may be treated blindly, or may buy antibiotics directly from a pharmacy without a prescription — a pattern Nyemazi specifically criticised. Where clean water, sanitation and infection control are weak, resistant organisms spread more easily through hospitals and communities. And where families pay for health care out of pocket, a prolonged resistant infection can wipe out savings, as Rob Purdie's story illustrates in stark personal terms. The WHO's message is that AMR is therefore also a question of fairness: the same infection can be a brief inconvenience in one health system and a financial catastrophe in another.

There is also a food and farming dimension that is often overlooked. Antibiotics used in livestock can encourage resistance that reaches people through food, water and the environment, while resistant organisms in animals can threaten food production itself. That is why the WHO's recommended measures reach beyond hospitals into animal husbandry, food systems and environmental contamination — and why progress depends on agriculture and environment ministries acting alongside health ministries.

Finally, the October warning matters because it reframes the problem. Calling AMR a "silent pandemic" once helped convey that it kills quietly, without the dramatic waves of a viral outbreak. Nyemazi's argument is that the silence is over: one million deaths a year, two every minute, is not a hidden toll. Framing it as visible and urgent is intended to unlock the political attention — and the budgets — that quieter warnings did not.

Illustration: A farm landscape with animals, a river and a clinic linked together, representing the One Health connection between people, animals and the environment.

What Happens Next

The test of the October warning will be what governments do with the updated Global Action Plan. The WHO wants national commitments translated into legislation, financing and accountability — including prescription-only enforcement for reserve antibiotics, stronger primary care so patients are diagnosed before being treated, and better surveillance so that every country can report reliable resistance data by 2030. Parliamentarians, Nyemazi argued, have a critical role: they control budgets and laws, and can demand that AMR plans are funded rather than merely announced.

On the science side, Nyemazi stressed that new antibiotics and antifungals are needed — but warned that developing new drugs will not solve AMR if existing medicines continue to be misused. Any new antibiotic, however powerful, will eventually face the same evolutionary pressure if it is overprescribed, sold without control or released into the environment. Stewardship — using the right drug, at the right dose, for the right infection, and only when needed — is therefore presented as inseparable from discovery.

For individuals, the WHO's advice is practical rather than dramatic: use antibiotics only when prescribed, complete the course as directed by a clinician, never share leftover antibiotics, and support the unglamorous measures that prevent infections in the first place — vaccination, hand hygiene, clean water and safe food handling. None of those steps makes headlines, but together they are the interventions the WHO says are already proven to slow resistance.

This article reports public-health findings and is general information only; it is not medical advice. Anyone who is ill should seek care from a qualified health professional rather than self-treating with antibiotics.

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FAQ

What is antimicrobial resistance?

Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites evolve so that medicines designed to kill them no longer work reliably. It does not mean every antibiotic has stopped working — it means treatment depends increasingly on which organism is involved and which drugs remain active against it.

How many people die from drug-resistant infections?

The WHO says about one million people die every year from drug-resistant bacterial infections alone — roughly two people every minute. A broader measure, counting deaths where bacterial resistance played a role, was associated with more than 4.7 million deaths worldwide in 2021.

Why is resistance getting worse?

Overuse and misuse of antibiotics in people, animals and agriculture accelerate resistance, as does poor infection prevention, weak surveillance, and the sale of antibiotics without prescriptions. Resistant organisms then spread between people, animals, food systems and the environment.

What is the WHO's plan to tackle it?

WHO member states approved an updated Global Action Plan on AMR at the 2026 World Health Assembly, a ten-year framework based on a One Health approach. The WHO is now urging countries to back it with legislation, financing, enforcement, better diagnostics, vaccination, hygiene and responsible antibiotic use.

What can individuals do?

Use antibiotics only when prescribed by a clinician, take them as directed, never share leftovers, and prevent infections through vaccination, hand hygiene, clean water and safe food handling. If you are ill, seek care from a qualified health professional rather than self-treating.

Sources

• World Health Organization, press conference marking the exhibition "AMR: The Human Stories Behind a Silent Pandemic," European Parliament, Brussels, 2 October 2026, as reported by Premium Times Nigeria, Nigeria Health Times, The Sun Nigeria and Savinews Africa.
• World Health Organization fact sheet and surveillance figures on antimicrobial resistance, including the one-in-six global resistance estimate and regional figures, as reported in October 2026.
• World Health Organization, Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) participation figures, 2016–2023.
• World Health Organization, updated Global Action Plan on AMR, approved at the 2026 World Health Assembly.