摘要：Antimicrobial resistance is widely regarded as one of the ma- jor public health concerns of the 21 st century [1,2], but there are no good estimates of the net global health burden due to resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. Although numerous studies have provided estimates of the burden of resistance of specific combinations of clinical disease, bacterial agent, antibiotic and health care setting (primarily hospitals in de- veloped countries), metrics vary, coverage is patchy and methodologies are inconsistent. Such data have been used to obtain partial estimates of resistance–related mortality and other outcomes for Europe [3], the USA [4] and the world [5], but because of huge information gaps and the need to extrapolate from small–scale studies these estimates, though helpful, should be regarded as tentative at best.
