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World Antibiotic Awareness Week: Growing risk of Antibiotic resistance

November 19, 2019

On Tuesday we covered the over usage of antibiotics and the detrimental effect it can potentially have on patients.

Antibiotic resistance is an everyday problem in all healthcare settings across the UK and Europe. The spread of resistant bacteria in hospitals or community healthcare settings is a major issue for patient safety:

  • Infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria increase levels of disease and death, as well as the length of time people stay in hospitals.
  • Inappropriate use of antibiotics may increasingly cause patients to become colonised or infected with resistant bacteria.
  • Few new antibiotics are being developed. As resistance in bacteria grows, it will become more difficult to treat infection, and this affects patient care.

Research published in 2018 shows that 33,300 patients die each year due to antibiotic resistant infections in Europe.

If we don’t change how we prescribe and use antibiotics, by 2050 there is likely to be an additional 10 million deaths each year worldwide due to resistant infections, with an associated economic cost of £66 trillion.