Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will take steps to review its death certification policy to allow for sepsis, infection and antimicrobial resistance to be registered as causes of death to support the NHS in measuring and monitoring the impact of those conditions.

Medical practitioners are expected to state the cause of death to the best of their knowledge and belief, including where death occurs as a result of infection and sepsis or where this was a contributing factor. The Department published a revised commitment in the 2022 Addendum to the ‘UK 5-year action plan for antimicrobial resistance 2019 to 2024’ to “work with the relevant professional bodies to seek to enhance training in death certification so that it records AMR where this can be identified as a cause of death”. The Department is working with NHS England and the devolved administrations to explore options for progressing this commitment before the end of the current action plan in 2024.