Costing Antimicrobial Resistance Interventions

This study estimates the costs of four key interventions to mitigate antimicrobial resistance globally by 2050. These interventions include improving access to water, sanitation, and hygiene, enhancing childhood vaccination, developing new antibiotics, and increasing access to healthcare and existing antibiotics. Using updated and original costing methods, including a novel Cobb-Douglas production function to cost improved access to healthcare and antibiotics, the total annual costs for these interventions are estimated for 204 countries. The key findings are as follows: it would cost $215.0 billion to scale up household WASH globally, $4.7 billion to achieve 100 percent access to a group of childhood vaccines, and $2.2 billion to develop new antibiotics. Additionally, $59.0 billion would be required to improve access to healthcare and antibiotics. Given that all countries benefit from rolling out these policies, there is a compelling case for high-income countries providing assistance to low- and middle-income countries to help them combat antimicrobial resistance.