Five-year action plan launched for antimicrobial resistance

The government has published a 20-year vision and five-year national action plan for how the UK will contribute to containing and controlling antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by 2040.

The plans, revealed by the Department of Health and Social Care, include targets to cut the number of drug-resistant infections by 10 per cent by 2025, reduce the use of antibiotics in humans by 15 per cent and prevent at least 15,000 patients from contracting infections as a result of their healthcare each year by 2024.

The government is keen to make sure current antibiotics stay effective by reducing the number of resistant infections and supporting clinicians to prescribe appropriately. Since 2014, the UK has cut the amount of antibiotics it uses by more than seven per cent and sales of antibiotics for use in food-producing animals have dropped by 40 per cent. However, the number of drug-resistant bloodstream infections have increased by 35 per cent from 2013 to 2017.

Maintaining its aim to make better use of digital, the plans also say that new technology will also be used to gather real-time patient data, helping clinicians understand when to use and preserve antibiotics in their treatment - with a long-term aim of building a database on antibiotic use and resistance.

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said: “Imagine a world without antibiotics. Where treatable infections become untreatable, where routine surgery like a hip operation becomes too risky to carry out, and where every wound is potentially life-threatening. What would go through your mind if your child cut their finger and you knew there was no antibiotic left that could treat an infection? This was the human condition until almost a century ago. I don’t want it to be the future for my children – yet it may be unless we act.

“As Health Secretary, responsible for one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world, I could not look my children in the eyes unless I knew I was doing all in my power to solve this great threat. We have time to act. But the urgency is now. Each and every one of us benefits from antibiotics, but we all too easily take them for granted, and I shudder at the thought of a world in which their power is diminished. Antimicrobial resistance is as big a danger to humanity as climate change or warfare. That’s why we need an urgent global response.”