Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the number of drug-resistant infections (a) in the West Midlands and (b) nationally in the next five years.

Public Health England (PHE) has published no estimates for the number of drug-resistant infections in the West Midlands or nationally over the next five years. The science of drug resistant infections is incompletely understood and is rapidly changing and evolving. Multi-drug resistant infections are unpredictable in their occurrence and can rapidly change. For these reasons producing estimates of the likely burden in future years is unlikely to be meaningful or robust.

Antimicrobial resistance is a priority for PHE who are working to improve surveillance and knowledge in this area. Specific antimicrobial resistant infections have been measured by PHE and openly published in weekly Health Protection Reports.