Antibiotic resistance could lead to 10 million deaths worldwide per year by 2050 and hit global gross domestic product by 2 to 3.5 percent, Yahoo! News reported on Monday.
Surgeries that have become much more widely available and carry a low-risk because of antibiotics, like Caesarean sections, could become dangerous without putting a stop to the growing resistance, according to the Review on Antimicrobrial Resistance.
The British government-led review found that the areas with the highest numbers of deaths attributed to antibiotic resistance would be Asia with 4.7 million, Africa with 4.1 million, Europe with 390,000 and the United States with 317,000.
The world's second-biggest killer, cancer, would cause only 8.2 million deaths by the year 2050.
Globally, if a solution is not found, 444 million people will die by 2050, according to Telesur TV.
"The damaging effects of antimicrobial resistance are already manifesting themselves across the world," the report said. "Antimicrobial-resistant infections currently claim at least 50,000 lives each year across Europe and the US alone."
The report also urged tackling the problem early due to an economic advantage. The economic costs are as much as $20 billion in direct health care costs and $35 billion in lost productivity.
Three types of bacteria - Escherichia Coli (E.coli), the Klebsiella pneumonia and Staphylococcus aureus - were already slowly becoming resistance to medicine.
