A group of Sheffield GPs are warning patients not to seek antibiotics to cure common ailments.
Doctors within the Sheffield Central GP Consortium stress that using the drugs as quick fixes will reduce their effectiveness when treating serious problems. It could make it harder for hospitals to carry out operations.
Ollie Hart, a clinician for Sheffield’s Central GP Consortium, said: “There is lots of strong evidence out there that we need to reduce antibiotic prescribing for common coughs and colds. These include NICE guidelines on respiratory tract infections.
“We have just done some work on this in the practice. Although antibiotics do serve a purpose, they should not be regularly relied on. Unnecessary use will increase resistance to them making it difficult to treat serious bacterial infections. We are informing patients of this by introducing leaflets into the practice.”
The advice comes as the European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) released a statement to all European doctors suggesting that operations such as organ transplants and chemotherapy would be compromised if antibiotics are powerless to protect patients from life-threatening infections.
This is the latest medical warning in recent years about antibiotic use by government, health protection experts and drug advisers.