Chris Green – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Green on 2016-05-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of the potential number of deaths due to drug-resistant bacteria in the UK in each of the next three years.

Jane Ellison

Specific information on the number of deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance is not currently available.

However, a Europe wide study of multi-drug resistance¹ estimated the number of deaths in the European Union, Norway and Iceland, due to multi-drug resistance in five specific bacteria. On the basis of population size, other things being equal, the conclusions reached in the study would imply that around 3,000 deaths per year in the United Kingdom may be due to multi-drug resistance in those specified infections. This is likely to be an underestimate as it omits consideration of large numbers of other bacteria.

Note:

¹ European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control/European Medicines Agency Joint Technical Report: The bacterial challenge: time to react 2009