Hospitals given 28 days to make plan for antibiotic resistance

Irish hospitals have been given 28 days to outline what measures they are taking to tackle the problem of growing antimicrobial resistance to commonly used drugs.

The Health Information and Quality Authority has announced a national quality assurance review across all 49 public acute hospitals in relation to antimicrobial stewardship.

In the first phase of the review, hospitals are being asked to self-assess their use of antibiotics and other drugs subject to growing microbial resistance.

Hiqa says last week’s finding from China that a newly discovered gene has made infectious Gram-negative bacteria resistant to the last line of currently available antibiotics has brought into sharp focus the importance of vigilance when it comes to the proper use of antimicrobials.

A failing to act in response to the threat posed by multidrug resistant bacteria could result in more annual deaths globally than cancer and diabetes combined by 2050, with a 15-fold increase in annual mortality rates, according to a recent UK government report.

In a second phase, 16 of the hospitals will be inspected to verify the findings of self-assessment.

The authority says the aim is to produce one unified piece of regulation to reflect the need for consistent good practice across the entire health service so that the threat may be addressed.

"Antimicrobial resistance poses a huge current and future challenge for health services globally," said Hiqa's inspector manager of healthcare regulation, Sean Egan.

“The ongoing discovery of new antibiotics has failed to keep pace with the emergence of antibiotic resistance. Consequently, as a society we need to ensure that all possible measures are in place to preserve the utility of antibiotics that remain effective in treating such infection.

“Antimicrobial stewardship helps to combat resistance by ensuring the effectiveness of antimicrobial agents is preserved for as long as possible through careful and expert usage.

“All public acute hospitals are expected to have effective antimicrobial stewardship programmes in place. In short, these programmes intend to ensure that every patient receives the right antimicrobial therapy, at the right dose, route and duration, for the right infection type at the right time.”

The term antimicrobial resistance covers the issue of growing resistance to antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals and other commonly used drugs.