How AMR is being tackled
Various governments across the world have published strategy documents to combat antimicrobial resistance. In 2015, WHO published a global action plan, which seeks to preserve and maintain the responsible and accessible use of antimicrobials for all.
In England, national data on antimicrobial use and resistance is monitored and reported yearly through the English Surveillance Programme for Antimicrobial Utilisation and Resistance (ESPAUR).
The report recently highlighted that while there have been improvements in antibiotic prescribing over the past five years (reductions in primary care and use of more narrow spectrum antibiotics in secondary care), there has also been a continued rise in bloodstream infections, with microbiology laboratories reporting increased antibiotic resistance.
Around three-quarters of antibiotics in England are prescribed by GPs.
In 2016, the majority of antibiotics in England were prescribed in general practice (74 per cent). See below.
Who is prescribing antibiotics?
- General practice 74%
- Hospital (inpatients) 11%
- Hospital (outpatients) 7%
- Dental practices 5%
- Other community settings 3%
Openly available data for benchmarking antimicrobial use in both primary and secondary care, with the introduction of hospital prescribing quality measures, is now available through the PHE Fingertips website.
The data is part of an AMR local indicator data set that includes data on five domains (AMR, antibiotic prescribing, healthcare-associated infections, infection prevention and control, and antibiotic stewardship).