O’Neill Review Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Theresa Villiers
Main Page: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)Department Debates - View all Theresa Villiers's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake
I absolutely agree. The difficulty is that due to the reward mechanisms in the system, such research and development is not happening. I will turn to that shortly.
This is not an apocalyptic prophecy. Antimicrobial resistance causes some 700,000 deaths globally and an estimated 12,000 deaths in the UK every year—similar to the number of people who lose their lives from breast cancer. Quite simply, if the bacteria that cause infections become resistant to antibiotics, people die. This issue is listed in the national risk register of civil emergencies, a five-year Government register, which states that an
“increasingly serious issue is the development and spread of”
antimicrobial resistance and points out that much of modern medicine will become unsafe. Minor surgery such as organ transplants, bowel surgery, cancer treatments and caesarean sections will become high risk—there will be more illness and more deaths.
Dame Sally Davies, our chief medical officer, pointed out that antibiotics have extended life by an average of 20 years—20 years of our lives may therefore be lost—and 40% of our population could die prematurely if this situation is not resolved. Operations would become unsafe due to the risk of infection during surgery or chemotherapy. Influenza pandemics would become much more serious. The national risk register states:
“The numbers of infections complicated by AMR are expected to increase markedly over the next 20 years. If a widespread outbreak were to occur, we could expect around 200,000 people to be affected by a bacterial blood infection that could not be treated effectively with existing drugs”.
Mrs Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital that we heed the O’Neill review’s recommendation that antimicrobial use in farming must reduce if we are to address the frightening consequences that he is outlining? In particular, we need to move away from intensive farming, which is reliant on the prophylactic use of antimicrobials.
Kevin Hollinrake
My right hon. Friend is right that bacteria can move from animals into humans, and the O’Neill review was clear that we need to take action in agriculture as well as our health services.
The national risk register states that we will be unable to treat some 200,000 people with existing drugs and
“around 80,000 of these people might die.”
That is a Government report.