Contributed by: Dr. Tamhankar& Siddarth David
On August 18, 2015, the National
Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK released its first
guidelines on antimicrobial stewardship "Antimicrobial stewardship: systems and processes for effective
antimicrobial medicine use". https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng15 The NICE is the statutory body in the UK that provides national guidance and
advice to improve health and social care.
The Guidelines are designed to promote
judicious antibiotic use by reviewing prescribing and resistance data and
providing feedback, education and training to prescribers. The NICE reports
that "9 out of 10 GPs say they feel pressured to prescribe antibiotics,
and 97% of patients who ask for antibiotics are prescribed antibiotics”. The
Guidelines have been aimed at health practitioners, pharmacists, nurses and provider
organisations.
The current edition of the
Lancet has an editorial on the strengths and weaknesses of the Guidelines. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)61522-7/fulltext?rss=yes The NICE guidelines are pioneering antibiotic stewardship in the UK, which is particularly
significant given that the UK lags way behind countries like Sweden and Norway
in implementing policies to address antibiotic resistance. The NICE
Guidelines are a welcome step to global measures on antibiotic stewardship and
hopefully would push other countries to take notice and follow with their own
guidelines.
