“Urgent action” needed to stop antibiotic overuse
MPs are calling on the government to take steps to limit antibiotic use in healthcare and farming.
MPs have warned the government to take “urgent action” to reduce unnecessary prescriptions of antibiotics in human healthcare and veterinary medicine.
Science and Technology Committee MPs welcomed the Prime Minister's announcement that a review will assess why so few new antibiotics have been developed in recent years. However the committee said this will only address one aspect of antimicrobial resistance.
Clear responsibilities are needed within the NHS and veterinary medicine to improve the stewardship of antibiotics, MPs have said.
However, there are concerns that major restructuring of the NHS may limit the ability to tackle growing antimicrobial resistance.
Committee chair Andrew Miller MP said resistance cannot be entirely prevented, but the issue is made worse through inappropriate use of antibiotics in healthcare and farming.
“We heard concerns, for instance, that antibiotics are often prescribed by GPs simply to achieve a placebo effect or placate patients with distressing symptoms,” he explained. “In farming meanwhile, we suspect that antibiotics may be routinely used on healthy animals...
“What we really need from government right now is decisive and urgent action to prevent antibiotics from being given to people and animals who do not need them.”
Committee MPs have called on the government to take action to limit the use of antibiotics in farming.
Mr Miller said: “We believe the government should be taking precautionary action to ensure that antibiotics are only being used on sick animals.”
The committee raised concerns that the use of tetracycline antibiotics in farming has increased 10 fold in since 1969, while the use of penicillin type antibiotics has risen nearly five fold.
Many procedures, including invasive surgery and chemotherapy, rely on the use of effective antibiotics.
Already, about 25,000 people in Europe die every year from antibiotic resistant infections.
Last week, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that economist Jim O'Neill would lead an expert review of antibiotics, aiming to come up with a plan to boost investment in new drugs.
Committee MPs have concerns, however, that it will take two years for the group to make recommendations. This must not impede agreements that could be made with pharmaceutical companies in the meantime, the committee says.
MPs are calling for better education of medical students, alongside greater public awareness of antibiotic resistance to reduce the pressure on GPs to prescribe drugs.
Furthermore, the committee recommends research be carried out to improve understanding of the link between animal and human pathogens resistant to antibiotics.
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
