Don’t kill last-hope pills: plea to GPs

THOUSANDS of overprescribing doctors will be told by the nation’s top doctor to cut back on handing out antibiotics to patients over fears Australia is on the verge of losing last-hope drugs to fight infections.

Australia’s insatiable addiction to pill popping has created superbugs that are becoming resistant to some antibiotics and transferring their resistance to other bacteria.

The problem is so bad Chief Medical Officer Professor Brendan Murphy is writing to about 5300 GPs to reveal their rates of prescribing antibiotics are higher than other medicos in their region and urging them to curb their use.

“Our community prescribing by general practice is higher than most comparable firstworld countries,’’ he said.

“Unless we can significantly control the misuse of antibiotics there is a potential for cases like the cases seen in America last year of untreatable infections just starting to become a reality in Australia.”

He said some drugs, which were not ideal, had to be used in Australia because others were no longer as effective.

“There are a number of drugs that are quite toxic that we would normally not use in treating human infection but sometimes when you’ve got a highly resistant bacterium we do have to use them,” he said.

“The world was pretty upset ...(when) in America late last year there was a patient who died of an infection that was untreatable by any antibiotics that they had available.

“It’s very rare to find that circumstance but the concern is that there are many situations where we might have an infection in an Australian hospital where there may be only one or two antibiotics available to treat (the patient).

“The fear is if we lose those remaining antibiotics we might end up potentially with untreatable infections.”