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Health Secretary Matt Hanbad warned that antimicrobial resistance is as serious a threat to humankind as climate change.
– What is antimicrobial resistance?
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when insects – including bacteria and viruses – no longer respond to drugs designed to kill them.
If these antibiotics stop working, minor infections such as a skin sore could be fatal.
– How did the problem occur?
It is natural that insects mutate over time and attempt to circumvent the action of drugs.
But humans have accelerated this process by over-reliance on antibiotics in agriculture, such as farm animals and medicine.
As a result, some strains of bedbugs, including tuberculosis, MRSA and Clostridium difficile, no longer respond to antibiotics that were effective against them previously.
There has also been an increase in super-microbes – drugs that are resistant not only to one antibiotic, but to many, if not all.
In this way, insects fight through the last line of defense that humans have to face.
– What can be done?
Antibiotics can treat bacterial infections but they are of no use against viruses.
Research suggests that most people mistakenly believe that antibiotics can be used to treat colds and flu caused by viruses.
In addition, antibiotics have been used on livestock to promote growth and protect health, but this has resulted in increased bacterial resistance.
It is now necessary to take steps to reduce the use of antibiotics and to administer them only when necessary.
The government has taken action and the use of antibiotics in the NHS and on livestock is down.
But he wants to go further and is committed to reducing by 15% the prescription of antibiotics in the NHS and 5,000 (10%) resistant infections by 2025.
One in three patients in British hospitals takes antibiotics at a time.
The number of resistant infections is estimated at 53,000 per year and more than 60 per cent are contracted in health facilities.
The government wants to reduce this by preventing at least 15,000 people from contracting these infections.
Health Secretary Matt Hanbad also announced a new payment system, in which pharmaceutical companies are receiving financial incentives to develop new drugs to combat antimicrobial resistance.
At the moment, companies are paid according to the amount of antibiotics that they sell, but that will change so that they receive money depending on the value of the drugs for the NHS.
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