Physical Address

304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124

Vaccines could put a major dent in deaths from antibiotic resistance

The number of lives that could be saved is even higher considering vaccine candidates in the pipeline.

Improving uptake of a handful of vaccines around the world could prevent up to 106,000 deaths associated with antibiotic resistance every year, according to a new analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Vaccines are seen as a critical tool to fight antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which is when people overuse antibiotics in medicine and farming, prompting harder-to-treat “superbugs” to emerge and leaving hospitals with few options to manage infections.
Researchers estimate that antibiotic-resistant infections could kill more than 39 million people over the next 25 years, and global leaders recently committed to curbing the death toll by 10 per cent by 2030.
The widespread deployment of vaccines that fight 24 key pathogens could reduce global antibiotic use by 22 per cent, according to the new report.
Boosting immunisations would protect people against infections while also reducing the need for second and third-line antibiotics if they do get sick later on.
“We’ve known for many years that vaccines could play a role in controlling [AMR],” Dr Martin Friede, who leads the WHO’s vaccine research unit, told journalists.
But “we haven’t, up until today, been able to say which vaccines and what the impact really could be,” he added.
The benefits are also financial, with researchers estimating that the existing vaccines could avert $861 million (about €772 million) in hospital costs and $5.9 billion (about €5.3 billion) in productivity losses per year.
“Treating [antibiotic] resistant infections is incredibly costly,” said Dr Mateusz Hasso-Agopsowicz, the report’s lead author and a technical officer at the WHO’s immunisations department.
Meanwhile, if vaccine candidates in the late stages of development become available, they could avert another 135,000 deaths per year, as well as $1.2 billion (about €1.1 billion) in hospital costs and $2.2 billion (about €2 billion) in productivity losses, the report found.
Global health specialists have their hopes set on a potential vaccine for tuberculosis (TB), which accounted for approximately 23 per cent of all vaccine-preventable deaths associated with AMR in 2019.
The existing TB shot (Bacille Calmette-Guérin or BCG vaccine) is widely used for babies, but it doesn’t provide enough protection against TB as an adult.
A new vaccine for TB, given to 70 per cent of babies worldwide, could have prevented 118,000 deaths in 2019, the analysis found.
That’s because it takes six to nine months of daily antibiotic use to treat TB.
The WHO officials recommended that governments scale up their existing immunisation programmes and work on developing new vaccines to combat the riskiest pathogens.
“Not only can we prevent deaths due to the pathogen, but we can prevent antibiotic use,” Friede said.

en_USEnglish