The Maltese health authorities are working on a national strategy that would target antibiotic misuse as international research warns of a coming “antibiotic apocalypse”.
Over the past month two reports – one by the World Health Organisation and another by the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases – warned that the world was heading into a post-antibiotic era due to microbes developing resistance to drugs.
This would mean that common infections could kill again since the microbes would not respond to treatment as they would have developed resistance to the drugs. World Health Organisation members last week started debating a plan to address the global problem of increasing resistance to existing antibiotics and the lack of upcoming new treatments to replace them during the World Health Assembly that ends on Tuesday.
Ahead of the assembly, WHO published a report that showed that three quarters of the world’s countries, including Malta, did not have a national plan to deal with rising levels of resistance.
International research warns of a coming “antibiotic apocalypse”
A spokeswoman from the Health Ministry said that the Health Department, through the National Antibiotic Committee, was working on a national strategy based on three inter-related elements: surveillance, prudent antimicrobial use, and infection control. “These three pillars will be supported by the provision of tailored information, education, communication and, where necessary, legislation or regulation.
“Such a strategy is reliant on a set of well-functioning surveillance systems of both consumption and resistance in both the veterinary and human sector,” she said.
A Eurobarometer 2013 report found that Maltese doctors were wrongly prescribing antibiotics for flu and sore throats “just in case”.
The use of antibiotics was the most widespread in Malta with 48 per cent of those polled saying they had taken them in the last 12 months. Cyprus and Romania tied for second place with 47 per cent.
Scientists from the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases said that, according to the latest evidence, 400,000 people died since the emergence of large-scale antibiotic resistance in the last decade. The figure was set to more than double in the next 10 years
An independent review commissioned by the UK government is proposing that the global pharmaceutical industry invests €1.8 billion in an innovation fund to revitalise research.