5 Health Challenges The World Will Face In 2015

What comes next for the future of the world's health? Unfortunately we don’t have an evidence-based crystal ball. But these are the issues reason would suggest will set the world's health agenda next year:

1) Drug-resistant infections are expected to soon kill more people than cancer — if we don't act fast

You'll be hearing a lot more about antimicrobial resistance in 2015 because we are literally running out of effective antibiotics.  It's natural for bacteria and viruses to evolve and slowly resist the drugs that we invent for treating the infections they cause. But for decades, we've been speeding up their evolution by overusing antimicrobials when they're not needed, by not completing prescribed courses of treatment, and by breaking infection control protocols in hospitals where these superbugs can easily spread.  In the past we've just invented new medications when the old ones became less effective. Unfortunately that strategy isn't sustainable: there have been no new discoveries of distinct classes of antibacterials since 1987...