GENEVA, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- Increasing resistance to essential antibiotics poses a growing threat to global health, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned with the release of its "Global antibiotic resistance surveillance report 2025" on Monday.

One in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections causing common infections in people worldwide in 2023 were resistant to antibiotic treatments, according to the new WHO report.

Between 2018 and 2023, antibiotic resistance rose in over 40 percent of the pathogen-antibiotic combinations monitored, with an average annual increase of 5-15 percent.

The report draws on data reported to the WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) from over 100 countries, and presents, for the first time, resistance prevalence estimates across 22 antibiotics used to treat infections of the urinary and gastrointestinal tracts, the bloodstream and those used to treat gonorrhoea.

The new report notes that drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria are becoming more dangerous worldwide, with the greatest burden falling on countries least equipped to respond. ■