PM orders crackdown on needless antibiotics
Farmers may also face ban on handing the drugs to livestock GPs must cut ‘inappropriate’ prescriptions in half by 2030
GPs will today be ordered to stop endangering lives by giving out millions of ‘inappropriate’ antibiotic prescriptions every year.
David Cameron will also announce severe curbs or even a ban on giving them to farm animals in a bid to halt the rise of drug-resistant bugs. Family doctors have cut the overall number of antibiotic prescriptions over the past year and the total is now at 34million.
But Downing Street warns that 10 per cent are still ‘inappropriate’ because the drugs weren’t needed to treat the patient’s illness. GPs will be told to halve the 3.4million antibiotics handed out in this way annually by 2030 – with cash incentives to help them comply.
Speaking at the G7 summit in Japan, Mr Cameron said the fight against drug-resistant bugs had to become a global ‘priority’.
British experts say it will kill more people than cancer by 2050 – and have accused doctors of doling out antibiotics ‘like sweets’.
Downing Street said that of an estimated 42 million prescriptions issued annually in England, 4.2million – or 10 per cent – were found to be not used appropriately.
Officials said doctors would be expected to halve that figure, which means slashing prescriptions by more than 5,700 a day.
Doctors will also be told they must halve the number of high-risk bacterial infections – such as E.coli – by 2020. Mr Cameron will announce new rules on prescribing antibiotics to livestock. In some cases, their use will be banned altogether.
Hundreds of millions of pounds will be on offer to drugs firms which produce new forms of antibiotics. A No.10 source said: ‘Over the dec-
‘It’s everyone’s business’
ades, antibiotics have been overused in human and animal health and, as a result, the very bugs which they treat are starting to outsmart the drugs.’
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said money needed to be spent to ‘save lives’. Financial incentives were introduced by NHS England in April last year to address the problem of over prescription.
Under the so- called Quality Premium initiative, NHS commissioners are paid an extra £5 per head for meeting targets on antibiotic use and other health issues.
Public health minister Jane Ellison said: ‘Tackling this problem is everyone’s business, doing nothing is not an option.’
Last week, a report by Lord O’Neill warned that superbugs will kill more people than cancer by 2050 and accused doctors of doling out antibiotics ‘like sweets’.
The peer, who was asked by David Cameron to conduct a review, said that by 2020 doctors should only be allowed to prescribe antibiotics if a blood or saliva test has definitively diagnosed an infection that requires the drugs.
Unless urgent action is taken, untreatable superbugs will kill 10million people a year by the middle of the century, he warned.
If antibiotics become unusable, key medical procedures – including caesarean sections, hip replacements and chemotherapy – could become too dangerous to perform because of the risk of infection.