6 November 2014: the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) hosted a summit on antimicrobial resistance, attended by GPs, hospital doctors, nurses and pharmacists. The summit called for binding national targets to “roll back” antibiotic prescribing to 2010 levels, to halt the relentless rise in resistance. The summit and the topic of antimicrobial resistance was covered that day by a range of national and regional media outlets, including the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Sky News, ITV News, Good Morning Britain and 140 regional media outlets, among others.
Speaking to Sky News, RPS chief scientist Jayne Lawrence said: “It’s quite a complicated picture because I do think there is some over-prescribing, but we’ve got to look at the reasons for over-prescribing and how we can reduce prescribing but also prescribe more intelligently. The public have to realise as well that antibiotics aren’t a cure for everything. I think the public also ought to have an expectation that they might not get an antibiotic when they go to the doctor.”