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GPs urged to cut antibiotics to help MRSA drive
09 Jan 08
GPs are being told to stop prescribing antibiotics for coughs, colds and sore throats as the Government steps up its drive on ‘hospital superbugs’.
Announcing Labour’s new strategy for curbing the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, health secretary Alan Johnson called for GPs to cut back on the unnecessary prescription of penicillin and other common antibiotics.
As well as costing the NHS an estimated £1.7 billion a year, the inappropriate use of antibiotics has been implicated in the developing resistance of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
Antibiotics may also strip the gut flora and allow other infections like C. diff to establish themselves in immunocompromised people.
Dr Mark Enright, an MRSA expert at Imperial College London said:
‘In the old days, before we had problems with resistance, people thought it really didn't matter - you could throw antibiotics at these cases and you would pick up the odd one that was treatable that way’, he said.
‘I am sure there are still GPs who think they know best and think antibiotics are the global panacea we once thought they were.’
Readers' comments
It’s all too easy to blame the GP but you need to understand the situation better. While working in the hospital, I used to feel the same. Working as a GP in the last few years, I have realised it’s not so easy to educate the patient and send them without an antibiotic.
Most patients with URTI are suffering from a viral infection or allergic rhinitis and need no antibiotic. Unfortunately doctors are blamed if the patient develops bacterial infection or is treated in hospital. The second problem is by refusing to prescribe an antibiotic you make the patient angry, resulting in a failed consultation. The third problem is we see patients accessing walk-in clinics, calling emergency doctors from out-of hours services or seeking what they need from another doctor or the practice nurse.
The Government is encouraging patients to complain and promising evening surgery, a 'personal' doctors service and other promises which it cannot keep. Why is it that doctors are always blamed for all the blunders? Whereas nurses are thanked for managing walk-in clinics very efficiently.
Nurse practitioners have been prescribing antibiotics since 2000, but there is no mention about them in this article. I have seen patients being given lower doses of antibiotics, improper choice and over-generous use of steroid creams.
In the last 25 years, doctors and nurses working in hospitals have not taken care about proper skin preparation when performing practical procedures. This over the years has produced “Nosocomial” infections which were not adequatly treated. Dr Mark Enright, expert on MRSA, must know that there are doctors all over the world (including Dr Fleming), who have expressed their concern about abusing antibiotics.
I feel this threat of CA-MRSA (like in USA) will soon impart a huge burden on doctors and we need to discuss how to deal with this threat instead of blaming one another.
The origin of resistant strains may be also due to not over-enthusiastic human consumption but to improper use by companies of additives to fatten chickens, stimulate growth of farm animals and to preserve food.