NICE issues guidance to tackle overuse of antibiotics

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the medicines watchdog for England and Wales, has published guidance to help doctors, nurses and pharmacists promote and monitor the sensible use of antimicrobials - a group of medicines that kill or stop the growth of microorganisms and include antibiotics, antivirals, antiparasitics and antifungals.

Antibiotics have been the mainstay of treating infections for over 60 years. Although a new infectious disease has been discovered nearly every year over the past 30 years, very few new antibiotics have been developed. This means existing antibiotics are used to treat an ever greater variety of infections and infectious diseases.

Overall antibiotic prescribing in England has been steadily increasing over several years. Nationally, 41.6 million antibiotic prescriptions were issued in 2013 -14 at a cost to the National Health Service of £192 million (about $300 million). Despite considerable guidance that prescribing rates of antibiotics should be reduced, nine out of 10 GPs say they feel pressured to prescribe antibiotics, and 97% of patients who ask for antibiotics are prescribed them.

GPs should be disciplined for overprescribing

General practitioners who needlessly hand out antibiotics should be disciplined to help curb the growing number of unnecessary prescriptions, Mark Baker, director of the Centre for Clinical Practice at the NICE, has reportedly said. If doctors fail to stick to its guidance they should be reported to the General Medical Council he added.