The global review sets out a plan for preventing medicine "being cast back into the dark ages" that requires billions of dollars of investment

The global review sets out a plan for preventing medicine "being cast back into the dark ages" that requires billions of dollars of investment

It also calls for a revolution in the way antibiotics are used and a massive campaign to educate people

The report has received a mixed response with some concerned that it does not go far enough

The battle against infections that are resistant to drugs is one the world is losing rapidly and has been described as "as big a risk as terrorism"

The problem is that we are simply not developing enough new antibiotics and we are wasting the ones we have

Since the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance started in mid-2014, more than one million people have died from such infections

And in that time doctors also discovered bacteria that can shrug off the drug of last resort - colistin - leading to warnings that the world was teetering on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era"

The review says the situation will get only worse with 10 million people predicted to die every year from resistant infections by 2050

And the financial cost to economies of drug resistance will add up to $100 trillion (?70 trillion) by the mid-point of the century

The review said the economic case for action "was clear" and could be paid for using a small cut of the current health budgets of countries or through extra taxes on pharmaceutical companies not investing in antibiotic research

Lord Jim O’Neill, the economist who led the global review, told the BBC: "We need to inform in different ways, all over the world, why it’s crucial we stop treating our antibiotics like sweets

"If we don’t solve the problem we are heading to the dark ages, we will have a lot of people dying

"We have made some pretty challenging recommendations which require everybody to get out of the comfort zone, because if we don’t then we aren’t going to be able to solve this problem."