EU health chief: Commission is stepping up antimicrobial resistance fight
EU health chief: Commission is stepping up antimicrobial resistance fight
The European Commission will increase pressure on the member states to better coordinate their national action plans to tackle antimicrobial resistance, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis said in an interview with EurActiv.com.
Vytenis Andriukaitis spoke with Sarantis Michalopoulos.
Are you concerned about the ceaseless rise of AMR on an EU level? Health NGOs claim that the 2011-2016 European Commission’s policy actions were not successful.
It’s an enormous problem, a massive threat, with severe consequences for the humankind.
I like the fact that sometimes NGOs are “maximising” things. They do a good job and we must always have watchdogs which are trying to motivate all of us.
But, let me point out that sometimes NGOs do not their homework well. I see there is a lack of awareness within the EU society.
Why are you saying that?
I will tell you an example. We made yesterday (17 November) an experiment with three pharmacies around Schuman area in Brussels and we found that only these sell approximately 41 antibiotics packages per day and therefore, there is an awareness issue.
Considering that there are 5,000 pharmacies just in Belgium, almost 205,000 antibiotics packs are being sold every day. So my question toward the NGOs is why are so weak in our awareness days. We should not have only this day to inform and raise awareness. The awareness of people is number one. Misuse, overuse, and underuse of antibiotics are a huge problem. Who knows today how many people illegally purchase antibiotics without any prescription?
The evaluation of the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Plan (2011-2016) showed that it had a clear EU added value, as member states took several actions by adopting national plans and the international cooperation was enhanced. Last year, we [The Commission] issued guidelines on the use of antimicrobials in veterinary medicine and next month we will do the same for the human medicine too. The evaluation also found that the Commission had invested more than €1 billion in research since 1999.
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