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IRELAND IS one of only three European states where levels of antibiotic use among patients in the community is continuing to increase year on year, a seminar in Dublin heard yesterday. As a result, there is a high level of resistance to antibiotics in the Republic.

Dr Robert Cunney, consultant microbiologist with the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, told the seminar that up to 20 per cent of pneumococcal infections here were now resistant to penicillin. There was also a "worrying" increase in the level of resistance among E.coli infections to the quinolone group of antibiotics - strong antibiotics used for life-threatening infections.