Oldham doctor says patients must wage war on 'ignored' pandemic

An Oldham GP has encouraged her fellow professionals and patients everywhere to wage war on what she insists is the world’s biggest health problem – because 'governments seemingly won’t'.

Speaking in the wake of another largely ignored campaign on antimicrobial awareness, Dr Anita Sharma said that there was growing evidence that antibiotics were not working to cure even simple infections.

Plus, their residue was polluting rivers and food, and potentially killing millions.

And she said only decent diagnostic tools to help doctors decide when they should be used, allied to less pressure from patients to prescribe them as a cure-all, was now the only way to avoid calamity.

In an open letter to medics, the women’s health expert said: “Of the 5.1 million antibiotics prescribed in UK primary care, 43.6% were given to patients who already received five plus antibiotics prescriptions in the previous three years.

"That is clearly overuse and misuse.

“This year, the University of Manchester and I are working on a research project which aims to optimise antibiotic prescribing in primary care, through better information during consultation and personalised patient leaflets.

"This, in my opinion, will help not only GPs, but also other health care professionals working in primary care who are involved in prescribing and managing antibiotics.

Despite small reductions in usage, patients are still under the impression they solve everything.

"Mind you, what hope have they got when the former Health Minister doesn’t even know how to use them properly!”

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria in our bodies become resistant to antibiotics – rendering them useless.

Taking too many antibiotics also blunts their effectiveness.

Mendacious farmers have used antibiotics to allegedly protect their livestock, which means their residue is in the food chain (fears are that Brexit may promote more American imported meat where antibiotic usage is less controlled).

Even our rivers are 'saturated' with antibiotics, says Dr Sharma.

“I was involved in a project to reduce antibiotic usage in Oldham in 2019, which used diagnostic equipment to decide whether patients really needed them or not,” she revealed.

“This helped doctors enormously, but the then Clinical Commissioning Group was reluctant to fund them due to cost.

"This means patients will continue to ask for antibiotics to cure everything from a cold to Covid, and unless GPs are on-the-ball constantly, the 2% rise in antibiotic resistant infections will continue.

"That has both a fiscal cost and a deadly human one.”

Dr Sharma’s plea comes at the close of World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (November 18-24), another worthy attempt at increasing knowledge of the condition to the public and clinicians.

“A problem of this magnitude deserves a properly funded global education campaign, a commitment to creating new antibiotics and a will to sanction those who abuse this most important medicine," added Dr Sharma. 

"Such a drive does not seem forthcoming, and we are sleepwalking into a crisis which makes me wonder if we learned anything from Covid?

"We must wake decision-makers up before it is too late, by lobbying our MPs and making sure that one of the most important issues facing us is on the political agenda.”

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