Antimicrobial resistance – A crisis for children everywhere

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Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, is a major threat to the lives of people of all ages and in all regions of the world. Despite being called ‘the silent pandemic’, AMR already contributes to 5 million deaths each year — more than the deaths caused by HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.1 With these impacts only expected to grow, addressing AMR will be critical to protecting health, particularly for children.

AMR occurs when microbes like bacteria and viruses become resistant to the medicines used to kill them. This means the infections these microbes cause become much harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat. While this process happens naturally, it is sped up when microbes are exposed to antimicrobial products, including when medicines are used by people and animals. As a result, common illness and injuries that should be minor can become life-threatening, and routine medical procedures like surgery, childbirth and chemotherapy become more dangerous due to the risk of catching infections that are drug-resistant.

Children face especially worrying risks from AMR. Children and babies are particularly likely to catch infections due to immature immune systems and behaviours like crawling and play, with infections already a leading cause of death among children under five.2 As drug-resistant infections grow and spread, more and more children will face the threat of illnesses that medical tools may no longer be able to treat.

This is not a future problem, but one already impacting children today. In 2019, nearly a quarter of global deaths directly attributed to bacterial resistant-infections occurred in children.1 At the moment the most vulnerable children are hit the hardest, 99% of bacterial AMR deaths seen in low- and middle-income countries, the great majority in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

However, this does not mean we should be complacent in the UK. Once resistance emerges, these problematic infections can quickly spread around the world. In 2023, nearly 67,000 people in England had serious antibiotic resistant infections,3 putting the NHS under additional strain – a pressure only expected to grow.

The interconnected nature of health means countries must work together, all playing their part to protect global heath security. This cooperation is happening, and countries met at the UN General Assembly at the end of 2024 to continue discussions on how to collectively tackle AMR. However, the needs and rights of children are not yet well integrated into this response, which leaves them particularly vulnerable to impacts of AMR going forward.

As a leading voice on this issue, the UK has a major role to play in championing a child-sensitive AMR response, both through delivery of UK-focused activity, and contributions to the global response. To do this the UK must:

  1. Commit to representing children as a distinct and important group in delivery of the refreshed UK AMR National Action Plan, both through nationally focused and diplomatic activity.
  2. Champion children in implementation of global commitments made at the 2024 High-Level Meeting on AMR, ensuring greater cooperation and exchange with UNICEF in the global AMR response is rapidly operationalised.

Without this support from the UK, children will continue to be forgotten and suffer at the hands of resistant infections. The UK must now deliver on commitments to global cooperation on AMR, working together with partners to safeguard global heath security and protect children everywhere.

Read more in our report – AMR is a crisis for children – setting out what an AMR sensitive response to AMR looks like, and what the UK Government can do to support this approach.

References

  1. GBD 2021 Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators, Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with forecasts to 2050. The Lancet, September 2024, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01867-1/fulltext
  2. WHO, Children: improving survival and well-being, September 2020, https://www.who.int/news-room/factsheets/detail/children-reducing-mortality
  3. GOV.UK, Antibiotic resistant infections continue to rise , November 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/antibiotic-resistant-infections-continue-to-rise