Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Government's strategy entitled Tackling antimicrobial resistance 2019–2024: The UK’s five-year national action plan, published in January 2019, what plans his Department has to educate the public on the use and misuse of antimicrobials and their role in tackling antimicrobial resistance.

Public Health England has developed a number of initiatives for educating the public which support the Government’s recently published strategy to tackle antimicrobial resistance; including a major national campaign, ‘Keep Antibiotics Working’, following a successful pilot in the North West in October 2017, to alert the general public to the issue of antibiotic resistance, with the aim of reducing patient pressure on general practitioners to prescribe. The multi-media campaign, which features advertising on television, radio, outdoor, digital, social media, public relations and extensive partnership support, has run for a consecutive year in 2018. Further information is available at the following link:

https://antibioticguardian.com/keep-antibiotics-working/

The United Kingdom wide Antibiotic Guardian campaign, now in its fifth year, aims to stimulate behaviour change and increase engagement to tackle antimicrobial resistance by healthcare professionals and engaged members of the public. The e-Bug programme, now celebrating its 10th year, aims to educate children, young people and communities about microbes, hygiene, infections and antibiotics. Further information on the e-Bug programme is available at the following link:

www.e-Bug.eu