Economic Impacts of Drug Resistant Infections on Cancer Care

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Authors: Mo Putera, David McKinney, Chloe Lee¹, Shalini Jayasekar Zürn², Sonali Johnson² and Scott Howard^{3, 4}

¹Alliance for Reducing Microbial Resistance, ²Union of International Cancer Control, ³Resonance  ⁴Yeolyan Hematology-Oncology Center

Key messages: 

• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) undermines the $200 billion spent globally on cancer medicines each year.

• Drug-resistant infections (DRI) cause excess mortality, increase hospitalisation costs, and erode the health gains that modern oncology treatments are designed to deliver. Yet AMR remains neglected in the oncology financing conversation.

• This exploratory analysis of single cancer types quantifies these losses by combining published prevalence of Drug-Resistant infections and mortality data with cancer treatment costs, hospital costs, and the monetised value of lost life-years. 

• Across case studies in the US, Italy, and Spain, each DRI episode removes up to $177K in health value, $33K in committed cancer treatment value, and $29K in additional hospital costs.

• At the population level, for US patients with febrile neutropenia, we estimate up to $105M in lost cancer treatment benefit, $121M in additional hospital costs, and $896M in lost health value per year. 

• Infection prevention and control, stewardship, and development of new antimicrobials each preserve $2.5–3.1B in health value by 2050, and combined preserve $7.4B. 

• For companies involved with developing and manufacturing cancer treatments, DRIs risk treatment stoppages and failures, while premature deaths terminate high-value, often multi-year treatment regimens. 

• While further work is needed to corroborate these findings, our analysis suggests that interventions to prevent and treat DRIs in cancer patients can function as a low-cost protection on a much larger investment in health.