[The worst-case-scenario situation would take humanity about a century back in time in terms of deaths from infections, when 1 in 9 skin infections killed and routine surgeries were considered super risky (since any incision left you open and vulnerable to infection). In India, that scenario may already be unfolding.



Last year, 58,000 newborns there died of bacterial infections that didn't respond to antibiotics. "While that is still a fraction of the nearly 800,000 newborns who die annually in India," Gardiner Harris writes in The Times, "Indian pediatricians say that the rising toll of resistant infections could soon swamp efforts to improve India’s abysmal infant death rate." (India already has one of the highest rates of newborn death in the world.)

"Five years ago, we almost never saw these kinds of infections," New Delhi neonatologist Neelam Kler told The Times.



"Now, close to 100% of the babies referred to us have multi-drug resistant infections. It's scary."