The United Kingdom’s Royal Pharmaceutical Society has recommended better stewardship in the use of antibiotics be encouraged in the wake of growing international concerns about the rise of antimicrobial resistance.
The recommendation is one of seven the society makes in a report discussing challenges around developing new medicines, improving existing medicines and making better use of the ones already available.
“The increasing development of resistance to currently available antibiotics is a potentially serious threat to public health,” the report, titled New Medicines, Better Medicines, Better Use of Medicines, says.
It says the “profound consequences of antibiotic resistance for individual patients and for society create an ethical and moral imperative to protect public health by all reasonable means”.