To mark World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, Public Health Wales are launching a campaign to combat the “silent pandemic” of antimicrobial resistance.
The campaign is aiming to raise awareness around antimicrobial resistance, promote best practice amongst healthcare professionals, and ultimately resume the good progress made before the pandemic paused proceedings.
In view of all this, Public Health Wales are urging medical professionals to only prescribe antibiotics when they are absolutely necessary – for the public, they are encouraging people to only take antibiotics when instructed to do so by a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or other health professional.
Additionally, nobody should save their antibiotics for later or share them with other people or their pets. If people find they have spare or unused antibiotics, they should return them to their pharmacist. People should also not throw their antibiotics in the bin or flush them down the toilet as this contaminates rivers, not only endangering human life, but animal life too.
Dr Eleri Davies, Deputy Medical Director and Head of HARP Programme, Public Health Wales said: “Antibiotics are a precious resource. We need to use them responsibly. If we don’t, the danger is that our antibiotic medicines will become ineffective, meaning we won’t be able to treat every day diseases.”
The danger with antibiotics, as Dr Davies alludes to above, is that when they are overused or overprescribed, bacteria become resistant to them, which subsequently breeds ‘superbugs’ that can no longer be treated with antibiotics. The danger of this to the planet and the general public is potentially catastrophic.
This all comes after National Health Executive sat down with the Founder and CEO of the UK Sepsis Trust, Dr Ron Daniels, to discuss the dangers of antimicrobial resistance and what we need to do in light of this challenge.
To learn more about the problem antimicrobial resistance presents, its potential consequences, and what we need to do to stop them, read our full article on the matter in the latest edition of our online magazine.
