Brussels, 03/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - The use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals and consumption of antibiotics by humans vary significantly from one European country to another, stated three EU scientific agencies on Friday 30 January.
Furthermore, there are gaps in the available data on this matter which must be addressed if resistance to antibiotics - a major public health issue - is to be tackled effectively. These are the main findings of the joint report published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
The three bodies say that, in order to address the gaps in information, additional data on antimicrobial consumption by animal species, data on antimicrobial consumption in hospitals in more European countries and monitoring of resistant bacteria in the normal flora from both healthy and diseased people are required.
This is the first joint report on “the integrated analysis of the consumption of antimicrobial agents and occurrence of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria from humans and food-producing animals”.
The analysis was carried out at the request of the European Commission and combines data from five European monitoring networks that gather information from the European Union (EU) member states, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.
The aim is to strengthen coordinated surveillance systems on antimicrobial consumption and antimicrobial resistance in human and veterinary medicine, and to allow policy-makers to decide on the best way to tackle antimicrobial resistance in humans and animals, which, European health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis says is one of the most urgent public health issues and one which he intends to make a priority of his term of office.
The report is the first in a series with contributions from the European Antimicrobial Resistance Network (EARS-Net), the European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Consumption (ESAC-Net), European Food- and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net), the Scientific Network for Zoonosis Monitoring Data and the European Surveillance of Veterinary Antimicrobial Consumption (ESVAC). (AN)