The worldwide epidemic of deaths unleashed by antibiotic resistant "superbugs" has taken the lives of some one million persons since the middle of 2014 and is expected to kill a person every three seconds by 2050. That's a total of 10 million deaths every year from antibiotic resistant infections.

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Bacterial antibiotic resistance poses the largest threat to public health in the world. A World Health Organization (WHO) report released April 2014 said this "serious threat is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country."

It noted that antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change to such an extent antibiotics no longer work in people that need them to treat infections. Allowed to continue unchecked, antimicrobial resistance or AMR could mean even a small scratch could turn life threatening while childbirth might again become deadly for both mother and child.

Microbes resistant to multiple antimicrobials are called multidrug resistant or superbugs. Researchers found that drug resistant E. coli, malaria and tuberculosis stand to become the greatest killers of humans by 2050.

AMR is a crisis mostly unknown to the general public but is causing alarm among the medical community that's been urging immediate action from governments and pharmaceutical companies to combat this threat for years.

Now, The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance calls for a "revolution" in the way antibiotics are used and a massive campaign to educate people to prevent AMR from becoming unstoppable. Some have described ARM as "as big a risk as terrorism".

The Review is calling for world governments to implement a series of steps to stem the oncoming tide of deaths. These steps include establishing a $2 billion Global Innovation Fund for early stage research; improved access to clean water, sanitation and cleaner hospitals to prevent AMR infections spreading; promoting the use of vaccines and alternatives to drugs and reducing the unnecessary vast antibiotic use in agriculture.

"If we don't solve the problem we are heading to the dark ages, we will have a lot of people dying," said Lord Jim O'Neill, the economist who led the global review.

Tagssuperbugs, World Health Organization, antimicrobial resistance, AMR, Microbes, The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance