Following evidence sessions, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has released their report into the risks of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The committee is a cross-party group of MPs who scrutinises the value for money of Government projects, programmes and service delivery.
The report highlights that there remains an “insufficient use of diagnostic tools to support the use of antimicrobials”. It criticises the missed target to report on the percentage of antibiotic prescriptions supported by the use of diagnostic tools in the 2019-2024 AMR National Action Plan and bemoans that this target is absent from the 2024-2029 National Action Plan.
The report recommends DHSC, NHS England and UKHSA should set out how they intend to make
demonstrable progress in the use of diagnostic tools, including under the Pharmacy First Scheme, over the next two years. This recommendation is welcomed by BIVDA and aligns with our AMR advocacy work over the past two years, including our recent consensus statement on community diagnostics.
In their evidence session, NHS England did claim that they envisaged “an explosion of point of
care diagnostic tests” as well as a very bright future for their use once the evidence base is ready.
Further criticism is reserved for the successive AMR Action Plans. It notes that the 2019-2024 AMR Action Plan was overall high in ambition, but largely failed to reduce AMR infections in people. The current iteration of the Action Plan is deemed the opposite, with its scaled-back ambitions perhaps being more achievable but unlikely to make impressive progress in combatting AMR.
However, the report does acknowledge that the UK has had some success in their international leadership on AMR in recent years.
