Denmark’s National Antibiotics Council is preparing new guidelines on the use of antibiotics in an attempt to limit their use, due to fears of increased bacteria resistance to the drugs.

At the same time, doctors have to register the illnesses for which they prescribe antibiotics.

“We expect to get more knowledge about when doctors choose to prescribe antibiotics. In order to advise when antibiotics use is too high, we need more information,” says Chief Physician Robert Skov of the Statens Serum Institut.

Skov says he is concerned at the continued high level of antibiotics consumption, the indiscriminate use of which can cause antimicrobial resistance.

The World Health Organisation, which says that resistance has become one of the world’s most serious human health threats, says the “inappropriate and irrational use of medicines provides favourable conditions for resistant microorganisms to emerge and spread.”

It adds that resistance comes, for example, when patients do not take the full course of a prescribed antimicrobial or when poor quality antimicrobials are used.

“We have seen a marked increase in the use of antibiotics of almost 30 per cent in the past decade. Consumption has luckily not increased that much between 2010 and 2011 – but as consumption was at a record in 2010, you could say that we are at an unchanged high level,” Skov says.

A minor epidemic of mycoplasmal pneumonia during the winters of 2010 and 2011 may explain some of the consumption, but only some.

Skov says that while the problem of resistant bacteria is not too serious in Denmark yet, unless something is done, the situation can quickly change.

“Globally we see bacteria that are very difficult to treat. And in some cases we also see bacteria that we are unable to treat,” Skov says.

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