The UK War Against Inappropriate Use of Antibiotics
Donaldson?s statement comes as the Government launches a 270-million-pound campaign on the unnecessary use of drugs such as penicillin.
He has
revealed that many studies show that the level of inappropriate prescriptions of antibiotics is between 25 to 35 per cent.
“If you had that level of error in dealing with people’s cheques, their back accounts and their statements, it would be an unacceptably high level and yet in health care we tolerate this sort of error rate,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
Donaldson stresses the importance of reinforcing the message that most common infections are viruses, and thus, do not respond to antibiotics. He points out that most colds, coughs and flu get better without the need of medicines.
“If we continue to give antibiotics when they are unnecessary we will promote much more antibiotic resistance and that is bad for all patients. It is a vicious cycle of having antibiotics for the wrong reasons thinking it is going to be a shield to cover all possible eventualities whereas in fact it is the opposite, it is promoting the sort of organisms including pneumonia that could be lethal in the future,” he said.
Filed under: Pharmacy News
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.