From: drarwingnuttephd@gmail.com   
      
   Doctors urged to cut antibiotics prescriptions   
      
   Growing use of antibiotics leading to increasing numbers of infections proving   
   resistant to them, experts say   
      
      
      
      
   Denis Campbell, health correspondent   
   The Guardian, Thursday 9 October 2014   
      
      
      
   There was a 6% rise in antibiotics prescriptions between 2010 and 2013.   
   Photograph: Doug Steley/Alamy   
   Doctors must stop prescribing so many antibiotics to patients because overuse   
   is leading to increasing numbers of serious infections proving resistant to   
   them, public health experts say.   
      
   The amount of antibiotics handed out by hospital doctors rose by 12% and by   
   GPs by 4% between 2010 and 2013, producing a 6% rise overall, despite growing   
   fears that overeager prescribing risks the drugs no longer being able to be   
   relied upon in many    
   routine operations.   
      
   Prescriptions issued in the community, for example by dentists, rose by 32%   
   over the same four years. Public Health England (PHE), which produced the   
   figures, said antibiotic use had to be cut to 2010 levels and "inappropriate   
   prescribing" had to stop.   
      
   It said increasing prescription of antibiotics was leading directly to a rise   
   in the number of potentially life-threatening bloodstream infections that were   
   hard to treat.   
      
   As prescription of the drugs has risen, so "the increasing number of E.coli   
   bloodstream infections has seen a corresponding increase in levels of   
   resistance to a number of key antibiotics", PHE said.   
      
   The highest rates of resistance in England were seen in places where the   
   largest amounts of antibiotics were prescribed. Doctors in the north of   
   England prescribe more than colleagues in the south, though that may be due to   
   poorer health linked to    
   deprivation, higher smoking rates and other factors, PHE said.   
      
   "Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats of our time", said   
   Professor Anthony Kessel, PHE's director of international health. He urged   
   health professionals and care providers to cut down their use in order to   
   "help save these vital medicines    
   from becoming obselete".   
      
   Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said family doctors   
   needed to do more to help curb growing antimicrobial resistance. "But GPs face   
   enormous pressure to prescribe antibiotics, even for minor symptoms which will   
   get better on their own    
   or can be treated effectively with other forms of medication," she said.   
      
      
      
   http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/10/doctors-antibioti   
   s-prescriptions   
      
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