Why Canada hasn’t been getting the new antibiotics we need to fight drug-resistant ‘superbugs’

More than one-quarter of infections in Canada fail to clear up when people are treated with standard antibiotics. This failure occurs because of a phenomenon called antimicrobial resistance (also called AMR), where bacteria and other microbes develop the ability to resist the effects of drugs designed to kill them.

These drug-resistant microbes — colloquially known as “superbugs” — are becoming increasingly common. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that antimicrobial resistance is among the top 10 threats to global health. And while drug resistance has long been forecasted to worsen over time, further research indicates that the problem has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.