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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Ajit Niranjan

‘It is a pandemic’: UK’s envoy on superbugs says scale of threat underestimated

Dame Sally Davies
Dame Sally Davies is a former chief medical officer for England. Photograph: Urszula Sołtys/The Guardian

The rising death toll from drug-resistant bugs is “very scary” and people do not even realise it is happening, the UK’s special envoy for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has said.

Superbugs kill more than a million people each year but neither governments nor the public recognise the scale of the threat, doctors complain. The crisis is largely driven by the misuse of antibiotics – about 70% of which are given to livestock – which encourages the evolution of microbes too strong for modern medicine to handle.

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