Assessing the Global Economic and Poverty Effects of Antimicrobial Resistance

We examine the future threat of antimicrobial resistance on the global economy and poverty. It looks at the impact on human health such as increased morbidity (illness) and mortality and their economic consequences in various countries and regions. These give rise to the direct and indirect costs of illnesses. The direct costs of illness are the resources used to treat, or cope with, disease, including costs of hospitalization and medication. When pathogens are drug-resistant, such treatment will be invariably more costly and produce worse outcomes for the patients and the community. Indirect costs of illness comprise the present and future costs to society from morbidity, disability, and premature death, in particular, the loss of output caused by a reduced effective labor supply (due to lower productivity and deaths of workers). Results indicate that the costly impacts of AMR are not distributed equally among countries at different levels of per capita income. The negative impact on GDP growth in low-income countries is more pronounced than in high-income countries. The two main reasons or this difference are a higher incidence of infectious diseases as well as a higher dependence on labor incomes in low-income countries than high-income countries. The impact of AMR on economic growth will result in a pronounced increase in extreme poverty. The main reason is the disproportionate impact of AMR on the economics of low-income countries which experience substantial and protracted shortfalls in economic output.