Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Good morning, members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research. I am profoundly grateful to have the opportunity to present to you. I've been working on this portfolio for three decades.
My name is John Conly. I'm an infectious diseases physician in the department of medicine, in active clinical practice, and also an epidemiologist scientist. More recently, with my colleague, Dr. Herman Barkema, I am a co-director of the newly designated WHO collaborating centre for AMR research and appropriate use of antimicrobials. I'm pleased to say we're the only global WHO collaborating centre that has a focus on the area of AMR research.
Before I begin, I'd like to briefly provide a territorial acknowledgement. because I am on the lands of the University of Calgary that acknowledges and pays tribute to the traditional territories of the people of Treaty 7. Treaty 7 includes the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut'ina Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda Nation. We are also home to Métis Nation Districts 5 and 6.
I have no disclosures in the last three years other than academic and public organization-related disclosures.
We've learned from the other speakers about the concerns over AMR and what's driving them. I was very pleased to hear about both the clinical and economic impacts of AMR. I would also refer you back to the study that was released in 2018 by the standing committee on the status of AMR in Canada and its many recommendations. You may have looked at it.
We are aware that AMR is a slowly-moving tsunami. Many of us consider it to be a silent pandemic, just gradually moving and far out to sea; we have not seen the full implications. We know that it has a huge clinical impact. There was a systematic review by the WHO released 10 years ago. It showed that for the three most common organisms—you've heard of staph infections, for example, or E. coli, which is a common infection for bladder and kidney—there was a 1.6 to twofold increase in mortality if you're infected with a drug-resistant organism compared to a drug-sensitive organism.
There was a global burden of disease study in The Lancet. This is done every few years. In 2022, it revealed that there are death rates from AMR directly attributable that are 10 to 25 per 100,000 lowest in Australasia and 250% higher in sub-Saharan Africa. We are also seeing unabated increases in conflict zones.
I look forward to the release on October 13 of the global antimicrobial resistance and use surveillance system report. Many of us have been engaged in looking at this. You will see that the results are very sobering. This is the so-called WHO GLASS report.
The drivers of this slow-moving tsunami are numerous. We've heard about multiple drug resistance; panresistance; massive reductions in research and development for new antibiotic agents; unabated and massive use in all sectors of society, which we've heard about; a propensity for rapid spread; and the fact that these drug-resistant organisms know no political boundaries. They are agnostic in that respect.
We know that this is a huge issue with humans, using an estimated 34.8 billion antibiotic doses per year with a 65% increase between 2000 and 2015. In animal and agricultural use, it ranged between 63,000 to 240,000 tonnes per year. We've heard about the interconnectedness in a “one health” setting. We know there was a propensity for a spread.
In 2024, there were one billion people who took airline flights across the world. You can see how rapidly—and just from the pandemic that we had with COVID-19—in such a shrunken world how AMR can spread so readily. COVID has had a major impact.
The CDC released a study just recently, and showed that there was a statistically significant increase in both bacteria and fungi related to this. There was also a systematic review in which Dr. Barkema and I were involved. It was published in 2022. It showed a markedly increased prevalence of antibiotic-resistant microbes associated with the COVID pandemic.
We've also seen significant burdens in society with the EU suggesting €1.5 billion per year and $20 billion in the U.S. These are direct societal costs exclusive of indirect costs.
The economic impact in Canada was very well outlined in the Council of Canadian Academies report from 2019, which predicted a $388-billion drop in the GDP in Canada with a rise to 40%. It has already made up to $2 billion in GDP—