How many people die from drug-resistant infections, and how did the 2019 Lancet study count them?
In 2019, an estimated 1.27 million deaths were caused by drug-resistant bacteria and 4.95 million were linked to them: two numbers, two meanings.
The best-known count comes from a 2022 analysis in The Lancet of the year 2019, which estimated 4.95 million deaths associated with bacterial (AMR), including 1.27 million deaths attributable to it. The two numbers answer different questions. "Attributable" asks how many people would not have died if their drug-resistant infection had been a drug-susceptible one. "Associated" asks how many people would not have died if they had had no infection at all, so it counts every death in which a drug-resistant infection played a part.
Attributable
- Imagine resistant infections were drug-susceptible
- Counts deaths that would not have happened
- 1.27 million in 2019
Associated
- Imagine resistant infections were no infection at all
- Counts deaths where resistance was involved
- 4.95 million in 2019
Many places have no data on these deaths at all. So the researchers combined data covering 471 million individual records or with predictive statistical modelling to estimate burden even for locations with no data. They covered 23 and 88 pathogen-drug combinations in 204 countries and territories. The attributable death rate was highest in western sub-Saharan Africa, at 27.3 per 100,000, and lowest in Australasia, at 6.5 per 100,000.
The study said AMR is a leading cause of death around the world, with the highest burdens in low-resource settings. It also flagged serious data gaps in many low-income places, which means the true picture is uncertain. These are modelled estimates with wide ranges, and the study itself says so.
Quiz me
0/3
Recap
Attributable means deaths that would not have happened without resistance; associated means any death where a resistant infection was present.
💡 A trick to remember it · Attributable is the blame, associated is the company: one counts deaths resistance caused, the other everyone it was seen with.
Surprising fact · There were 4.95 million deaths associated with resistant bacteria in 2019, but only 1.27 million were attributable to the resistance itself.
Connects to
Sources (2)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (13 claims) cites at least one of these.