‘Last-line’ antibiotic use is on increase in Ireland

When antibiotics are not prescribed patients can be given information on how long their symptoms can last, how to treat them and what to do if they do not ease.

In order to curb this growth the World Health Organisation has launched their first global campaign for the better use of antibiotics.

Antibiotics are used in medicine to help fight bacterial infections an ailment in humans and animal kingdom, but these medicines tend to get less potent, once we start abusing them (over-using). This summer, health watchdog NICE threatened to refer “soft touch” family doctors to their regulator if they kept handing out pills too freely. But their overuse and misuse has led to antibiotic resistance.

Members of NHS Kernow’s prescribing and infection control teams also meet with colleagues from the Royal Cornwall Hospital and community hospitals to implement the key actions in the joint Department of Health/DEFRA five year antimicrobial strategy to slow the development and spread of antibiotic resistance. “Drugs that were effective in treating deadly diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV, malaria etc are increasingly losing their impact”, said a media statement issued by Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia on the World Antibiotics Awareness Week (November 16-22). By using antibiotics, we may increase the risk of becoming obese and getting diabetes.

For a few bacteria, there have also been good results in cutting infections. When a patient comes to hospital with a superbug infection, we should trace how he or she landed into the situation. This resistant bacteria can then travel up the food chain and could be introduced into humans through the consumption of animal products. This is borne out by the recently released State of World Antibiotics 2015 conducted by the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, New Delhi. Patients can become very sick as treatments fail to work.

This is up from 16.1 doses in 2010 – a rise of 6.2 per cent – and the rates increased even more sharply from 2013, when they rose by 2.1 per cent over the following year. “We wanted to implement something that would provoke a conversation between prescriber and patient”, Watkins said. The theme of the campaign will be Antibiotics: Handle With Care and will aim at improving the general public’s level of awareness about the use and misuse of antibiotics, involving public authorities, health professionals and agriculturists.

“In fact, if you laid all the unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics on top of each other, just for England alone, the paper tower would be double the size of the Empire State Building or 10 times the height of Big Ben”. We are also pleased that the organization is continuously active on UWA’s campus, as two honors biology student are working on their thesis in antibiotic discovery. These small things will make a dramatic difference.