By Shobha Shukla

The world is heading towards widespread resistance to common antibiotics. So indicates the Global Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance Report 2025, that was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO), cautioning that increasing resistance to essential antibiotics poses a growing threat to public health systems globally – especially in countries least equipped to handle it.

Alarming trends in antibiotic resistance

Data submitted by 104 countries to the WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) reveals that between 2018 and 2023 bacterial resistance to 40% of monitored antibiotics rose by 5–15% annually. Drawing from more than 23 million bacteriologically-confirmed infections, the report estimates that 1 in 6 common bacterial infections gl

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