Government reports progress on antibiotics resistance

The World Health Organization has warned that by 2050, resistance to antibiotics could kill 10 million people a year. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

A Swiss government report has found that measures to combat antibiotic resistance in Switzerland are bearing fruit. There has been a decline in the use and prescription of antibiotics for both human and veterinary medicine.

The “Swiss Antibiotic Resistance Report 2022” publishedExternal link on Thursday revealed that since 2012, antibiotic prescriptions within veterinary medicine have dropped by roughly half. In human medicine, consumption of antibiotics was fairly stable between 2010 and 2019 but there was a significant decline (40%) in the use of critical “watch” antibiotics, those where resistance is of biggest concernExternal link according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Between 2012 and 2019, the decrease in consumption for human medicine was 7%. There was, however, a significant decline in use during the Covid-19 pandemic. Social-distancing restrictions and masks likely helped reduce infectious diseases, and led to a 19% drop in antibiotics use.

Some 36% of antibiotics prescribed in 2021 were from the critical watch list, which is for the first time lower than the WHO target of 40%.

Antibiotic resistance is a growing concern globally. The WHO has warned that by 2050 resistance to antibiotics could kill 10 million people a year. This has made it critically important to invest in new antibiotics as well as curb consumption of existing antibiotics.

The report paints a mixed picture in terms of progress on resistance, where some bacteria showed higher resistance, while others were stable or even declined. 

Switzerland launched a strategy in 2015 to ensure antibiotics remain effective in the long term and to curb the development of resistance. This included various measures such as guidelines, manuals, recommendations and further training courses for doctors and veterinarians in choosing antibiotics and using them correctly.

Alongside the strategy, the government also supported a national research project (NRP 72) in called “Antimicrobial Resistance – A One Health Approach”. The results of this 5-year, CHF20 million project have also been published alongside the report and offer insights into new possible solutions that could be adopted to curb resistance.