For the European Antibiotic Resistance Awareness Day, Marisol Touraine announced a plan with three objectives in order to consume less antibiotics.
As in other countries, the consumption of antibiotics in France is problematic: while it had decreased from the 2000s (-10.7% between 2000 and 2013), an upward trend has been observed for three years. (+ 5.9%). However, excess consumption can lead to resistance to these drugs, and therefore to therapeutic dead ends.
In order to reverse this trend, Marisol Touraine announced the establishment of a special working group on the preservation of antibiotics. Three objectives have been defined by the Minister of Health: find an economic model that will support the emergence of new molecules, in order to consume less antibiotics; relaunch a new prevention program through communication, in particular aimed at the youngest; finally, encourage doctors, hospital practitioners and pharmacists to be more reasoned in the use of antibiotics.
Marisol Touraine made the announcement during a visit to the Janssen laboratory research center in Val-de-Reuil in Normandy. This site is the symbol of the fight against “super-bacteria”, since it is one of the few to have discovered a new antibiotic, bedaquiline, authorized in Europe since the spring, which attacks multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. .
Consumption on the rise since 2010 for general medicine
At the same time, a document jointly revealed by the Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS) and the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) warns about the evolution of antibiotic consumption between 2003 and 2013. According to the two institutes, it is necessary to put in place “a determined and lasting mobilization”.
For city medicine (90% of antibiotic consumption), there are two movements: first between 2003 and 2010, an irregular development, even if consumption remains stable overall. Since 2010, the trend has been growing, slow but real, confirmed by the figures for 2013 which see the consumption of antibiotics peaked at 30.1 DDJ (defined daily dose) per 1000 inhabitants per day, the highest score of the decade !
Broad spectrum penicillins are increasingly used. For ANSM experts, “such a progression is all the more worrying given that amoxicillin associated with clavulanic acid is one of the antibiotics which generate particularly bacterial resistance. “
Penicilin, the most commonly used antibiotic in hospitals
In hospitals, as in general medicine, penicillins are still the most widely used class of antibiotics. Amoxicillin in combination with clavulanic acid corresponds to more than a third of consumption.
25,000 deaths per year in Europe
Among antibiotic-resistant bacteria, study data shows a decrease in resistance in Staphylococcus aureus. In contrast, the resistance of Enterobacteriaceae is constantly increasing, for example for strains of E coli.
Resistant bacteria are particularly dangerous, since 25,000 people die from them each year in Europe and 23,000 in the United States.
.
