Antibiotic dependence rates in the Netherlands are back to worrying levels despite declines during pandemic, doctors say

Newfoundland and Labrador’s reliance on antibiotic prescriptions could have deadly consequences, an expert says.

Dr. Peter Dailey, an infectious disease specialist and associate professor at Memorial University, said the province’s tendency to overprescribe medications has negative consequences that go beyond personal experience.

According to a 2022 study by the Netherlands Health Service, the province prescribes more antibiotics per capita than anywhere else in the country.

Daly said experts are concerned that antibiotics are being used when they are not needed.

“The world is running out of antibiotics,” Daly said. “We just take it for granted that if we have a sore throat or some kind of infection, we’re going to take antibiotics.”

Daley has been sounding the alarm since 2017, when he spoke to CBC News to discuss the same overprescription issue.

Daley said at the time that patient demand and “poor selection of doctors” exacerbated the problem.

Six years later, the province is still facing the same problem.

Daly said before the pandemic, the province was writing 800 antibiotic prescriptions per 1,000 people per year in 2018-2019.

He said that number dropped during the worst of the pandemic in 2020-2021, which he speculated was largely due to a lack of medical services.

Now that number is back to 600 prescriptions per 1,000 people a year, he said.

Daley said this marks a slight improvement, but the downward trend must continue or risk taking a toll on the province’s strained health-care system.

Resistance movement kills thousands

The world is facing an antimicrobial resistance crisis, with the World Health Organization naming it one of the top ten threats to global public health.

November 18-24 is observed as Global Antimicrobial Awareness Week.

According to the World Health Organization, when “bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medications, making infections more difficult to treat and increasing the risk of disease transmission, serious illness, and death. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when

Daly said drug resistance can be exacerbated when patients take antibiotics unnecessarily. When people develop resistance, typical medications no longer work when they are really needed.

“Pease is not going to ask you not to need antibiotics,” he said. “For doctors, please don’t prescribe antibiotics that your patients don’t need.”

Daly said some treatments that don’t require antibiotic treatment include pharyngitis, sore throat, sinusitis, nasal congestion, acute bronchitis or wheezing, or inner ear infections in children.

The long-term effects of antimicrobial resistance include increased mortality when drugs don’t work as well as doctors expect.

“We are actually losing patients in this country,” Dailey said. “We estimate that around 14,000 people die each year due to antimicrobial resistance.

“We encourage patients to ask their doctor, ‘Do I have alternatives to antibiotic treatment?'” Dailey said. “Stop asking for things that not only don’t help you, but are actually harmful to this ecological problem.”

Antibiotic resistance continues to increase due to the lack of development of new drugs to treat infections.

“Companies are not creating new antibacterial drugs to help us solve this problem because they are not profitable enough for the companies,” Daly said.

“People like me are struggling when we’re trying to save people’s lives and we don’t have antibiotics available.”

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