Superbugs could kill 39 million people by 2050. Here's what Canadian survivors, doctors say should change
CBC
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Melissa Murray regularly ran 10 kilometres a day — until a serious bacterial infection caused her to nearly lose a leg.
Last summer, the Toronto woman who'd worked 60-hour weeks as an account manager suddenly needed round-the-clock care to recover from sepsis. The life-threatening condition results from the immune system's overreaction to fighting an infection.
Septic shock deprived Murray's heart and kidneys of vital blood and oxygen, and her blood pressure plunged dangerously low. To save her life, surgeons urgently had to cut out half a calf muscle and tendons plus the inner side of the other leg.
"I kept saying it feels like there's like a campfire in my leg," Murray, 46, recalled of the "excruciating" ordeal in July 2023.
"The pain was so bad I wanted to get out of my body."
Murray had an invasive Group A strep (iGAS) bacterial infection that could not be treated with standard antibiotics. Doctors don't know how Murray got the infection, saying it could've been from something as small as a nick in the skin from shaving.
Antibiotic-resistant microbes, sometimes called superbugs, are major contributors to sepsis — and may well be the biggest international public health threat of our time. World leaders called antibiotic resistance "an urgent global health threat." Here's what patients and doctors say should change.
Bacteria live in or on us, often beneficially or harmlessly. But antimicrobial resistance occurs when the germs that can cause infections develop the ability to evade medicines like antibiotics.
At this week's United Nations General Assembly in New York, world leaders called antimicrobial resistance or AMR "an urgent global health threat," and aimed to reduce the estimated 4.95 million human deaths associated with it per year by 10 per cent by 2030.
As bacteria evolve over time, they can stop responding to the antibiotics that once killed them. Infections are then harder to treat — and sometimes even impossible.
Sepsis is one of the devastating consequences of antimicrobial resistance. The resistance can also render a minor skin wound incurable or turn a routine surgery into an opportunity for dangerous microbes to invade.
Antimicrobial resistance "is one of the major causes of death in [all] our countries as we speak, but the worst part of the news is that it will be the No. 1 cause of death by 2050," Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the chair of the Global Leaders Group on AMR, told reporters from the UN on Thursday.
Antibiotics are a precious resource. Bacteria acquire resistance genes from each other. If someone doesn't take all of the antibiotic pills they've been prescribed, a single bacterium remaining in the person's system can evolve resistance and quickly pass on the advantage.
