Nearly 10,000 people died in Germany due to antibiotic misuse

In 2019, 9,600 people in Germany died from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These are cases where patients could have been saved if the infections had been treated with conventional drugs, writes Stern.

In total, around 45,000 deaths were recorded that year related to such infections. But in most of these cases, the patients probably would not have survived even without the bacteria's resistance.

The most common fatal infections affected the blood, lungs and abdomen. Most cases were caused by several types of bacteria, including E. coli.

The Robert Koch Institute carried out these calculations together with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. These are the most comprehensive estimates of the scale of the antibiotic resistance problem in Germany before the coronavirus pandemic.

Globally, in 2021, an estimated 4.7 million deaths worldwide were attributed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Of these, about 1.1 million people died because of this resistance — meaning they could have been saved if the infections had been treated, according to a study published in Health Data.

The researchers estimated the mortality and disability-adjusted life years lost due to bacterial antibiotic resistance for 22 bacterial species, 84 bacteria–drug combinations, and 11 types of infectious syndromes in 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2021. The situation changed differently for different groups during this period. Mortality among children under 5 years of age more than halved. However, among people over 70 years of age, mortality from such infections increased by more than 80%, the article says.

Last year, we wrote that Ukraine leads the EU in antibiotic use due to the war. The military is taking drugs en masse, which leads to bacterial resistance and complicates further treatment by doctors.

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