It might sound like a bad science fiction film from the 1960s, but the reality is that fungal infections now kill four times more people than malaria – and they are becoming increasingly dangerous.
Globally, there are more than 150 million severe cases of fungal infections and 1.7 million deaths annually, and those numbers are rising steadily because infections caused by yeasts and moulds are becoming more difficult to treat.
As we have already seen with bacterial resistance and the emergence of MRSA and other forms of drug-resistant staphylococcus, yeasts and moulds are mutating and finding ways to evade the drugs we use to treat them.
