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Antibiotic resistance

Please help us to help everyone by not seeking antibiotics un-necessarily.

Antibiotic resistance is a global problem, which means we will likely to be soon entering a "post-antibiotic era", when there are no antibiotics available to treat some of the most serious and life-threatening infections we can all catch.

The sharp end of stopping the march of antibiotic resistance is not prescribing antibiotics for simple self-limiting infections. Whilst these infections are universally annoying and unwanted, they do not require antibiotics and the use of antibiotics for those infections contributes directly to the process of resistance.

These issues have been well recognised for twenty years, yet patients still regularly approach the practice asking for antibitoics for their coughs, colds or sore throats. If that same patient wishes to conserve the few antibiotics that we have so that they might have their life saved when they have a significant infection, then they must accept that these processes are mutually-exclusive and that they cannot have antibiotics for their simple self-limiting infections.

In 2013 the UK Chief Medical Officer told parliament that the 'danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism on a list of threats to the nation' reflecting the substantial risk to society from the problem.