Pakistan is facing a serious public health crisis due to the unnecessary and incomplete use of antibiotic medicines, and medical experts warn that this trend may become even more dangerous in the coming years.
According to health specialists, Pakistan ranks 29th among 204 countries in terms of antibiotic resistance, while nearly 200,000 to 300,000 people lose their lives every year due to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the country.
Doctors state that the number of patients in intensive care units suffering from infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria is steadily increasing, and if the situation continues, these resistant organisms may soon become one of the leading causes of death worldwide.
The World Health Organization (WHO) explains that antimicrobial resistance develops when bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites gradually become resistant to medicines, rendering standard treatments ineffective and making infections extremely difficult—or sometimes impossible—to cure.
Dr. Saeed Khan, head of the Molecular Pathology Laboratory at Dow University of Health Sciences, said that antimicrobial resistance has become a major global threat because it prolongs illness, increases treatment costs, raises the risk of complications, and significantly heightens mortality rates. He warned that without effective control measures, deaths caused by antibiotic resistance could reach 10 million annually by the year 2050.
According to Dr. Khan, Pakistan’s high resistance rate stems from several factors, including buying antibiotics without prescriptions, unnecessary or incomplete medication use, poor infection control in hospitals, excessive antibiotic use in livestock and poultry, and weak surveillance and reporting systems.
Multi-drug resistant gram-negative infections and XDR typhoid have emerged as major challenges in ICUs, neonatal wards, surgical units, and TB wards. Studies show that 40 to 70 percent of ICU patients in major hospitals suffer from such infections, most of which are caused by gram-negative bacteria, making treatment increasingly complex and prolonged.
