The state of the world's antibiotics 2015

Executive summary Since their introduction into medicine in the 1940s, antibiotics have been central to modern healthcare. Their role has expanded from treating serious infections to preventing infections in surgical patients, protecting cancer patients and people with compromised immune systems, and promoting growth and preventing disease in livestock and other food animals.Now, however, once-treatable infections are becoming difficult to cure, raising costs to healthcare facilities, and patient mortality is rising, with costs to both individuals and society. Decreasing antibiotic effectiveness has risen from being a minor problem to a broad threat, regardless of a country's income or the sophistication of its healthcare system. Many pathogens are resistant to more than one antibiotic, and new, last-resort antibiotics are expensive and often out of reach for those who need them.