Every year, antibiotic resistance — the failure of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections — kills more people in India than in any other country. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Washington, drug-resistant infections were directly responsible for 267,000 deaths in India in 2021, and were associated with nearly a million more. Failing antibiotics are a catastrophe unfolding in hospital wards from Vellore to Varanasi, and one that will worsen considerably if India does not change course.

The standard response to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) focuses on restricting antibiotic use, including better prescribing practices, tighter pharmacy regulations, and reduced over-the-counter sales. All of that is necessary, particularly in India’s cities, where antibiotics are dispensed with alarming frequency for viral fevers, coughs, and diarrhoea that will most likely resolve on their own. In rural India, the problem runs the other direction: People who genuinely need antibiotics often cannot access or afford them. Antibiotics overuse accelerates the selection of resistant strains, while underuse leads to incomplete treatment and avoidable death and suffering.

But, there is a third strategy to tackle antibiotic resistance — vaccination. If you prevent the infection, you never need the antibiotic. And if you never prescribe the antibiotic, you never create the selection pressure that turns a treatable bacterium into an untreatable one. A report released this week in New Delhi by the Global Antibiotic........

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