One in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections causing common infections in people worldwide in 2023 were resistant to antibiotic treatments, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) report launched today. Between 2018 and 2023, antibiotic resistance rose in over 40% of the pathogen-antibiotic combinations monitored, with an average annual increase of 5–15%.
Data reported to the WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) from over 100 countries cautions that increasing resistance to essential antibiotics poses a growing threat to global health.
The new Global antibiotic resistance surveillance report 2025 presents, for the first time, resistance prevalence estimates across 22 antibiotics used to treat infections of the urinary and gastrointestinal tracts, the bloodstream and those used to treat gonorrhoea. The report covers 8 common bacterial pathogens – Acinetobacter spp., Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, non-typhoidal Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae – each linked to one or more of these infections.
WHO estimates that antibiotic resistance is highest in the WHO South-East Asian and Eastern Mediterranean Regions, where 1 in 3 reported infections were resistant. In the African Region, 1 in 5 infections was resistant. Resistance is also more common and worsening in places where health systems lack capacity to diagnose or treat bacterial pathogens.
“Antimicrobial resistance is outpacing advances in modern medicine, threatening the health of families worldwide,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “As countries strengthen their AMR surveillance systems, we must use antibiotics responsibly, and make sure everyone has access to the right medicines, quality-assured diagnostics, and vaccines. Our future also depends on strengthening systems to prevent, diagnose and treat infections and on innovating with next-generation antibiotics and rapid point-of-care molecular tests.”
