Antimicrobial Resistance: An Emerging Global Threat to Modern Medicine

The article highlights how the rapid rise of drug-resistant bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites is undermining the foundations of modern healthcare, threatening to make routine infections harder—and sometimes impossible—to treat. AMR is driven primarily by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials in human medicine, livestock production, and the environment, combined with weak infection-prevention systems and limited surveillance capacity in many countries. As resistance accelerates, essential medical procedures such as surgeries, organ transplants, dialysis, and cancer chemotherapy become far riskier due to the heightened chance of untreatable infections. The article emphasises the growing global burden of AMR, including increasing mortality, prolonged hospital stays, and escalating healthcare costs, while also stressing the urgent need for coordinated global action: strengthening stewardship, improving sanitation and vaccination, advancing diagnostics, incentivising new antimicrobials, and reducing inappropriate antibiotic exposure across all sectors.