NHS is ‘hiding’ deaths caused by drug-resistant infections, Chief Medical Officer warns 

NHS is hiding the true scale of deaths caused by drug-resistant infections out of fear the health service will look bad, Chief Medical Officer warns

• Deaths from untreatable infections ‘are not recorded on death certificates’
• Antibiotic resistance could already be costing the NHS £180 million a year 
• It is predicted to kill up to 10 million people a year worldwide by 2050
• Dame Sally Davies warns of gonorrhoea, which is increasingly difficult to treat

The NHS is hiding the true number of people who are dying from antibiotic-resistant superbugs, the government’s health chief has warned.

Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer for England, are not properly recording patients’ cause of death when they are killed by the infections.

She said families are ‘rarely told’ if their relative has died of a drug-resistant bacteria because it would ‘look as if the NHS is failing’.

Infections which do not respond to normal medications – a phenomenon called antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – are on the rise and expected to kill up to 10 million people a year by 2050.

And research has shown at least 700,000 patients are already dying each year from untreatable infections around the world, Dame Sally told the government.

She pointed the finger at the health service for not properly recording causes of death, pharmaceutical companies for not investing in new antibiotics, and the government for cutting health budgets.

Growing numbers of people are dying because of infections which have evolved to become resistant to antibiotics, but England’s Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, says the NHS is not recording the deaths properly out of fear the figures will make the health service look bad

Speaking to the UK Government’s Health Select Committee, Dame Sally said that without antibiotics, modern medicine will be ‘lost’.

She called for a rule change to make sure it is routinely recorded on people’s death certificates if they died of an antibiotic-resistant infection.

She said: ‘That would really wake people up to the deaths as they happen,’ The Telegraph reported.

‘One of the problems at the moment is families often don’t know that their bereavement was due to infection,’ Dame Sally added.

‘And they’re rarely told that the infection was resistant to treatment because it looks as if the NHS is failing.’

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Dame Sally claimed the NHS avoids admitting people have died because of AMB because it would make the health service look bad.

Infections which have become resistant to medicines are mostly ones which used to be easy to treat.

WHAT IS ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE? 

Antibiotics have been doled out unnecessarily by GPs and hospital staff for decades, fuelling once harmless bacteria to become superbugs. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously warned if nothing is done the world is heading for a ‘post-antibiotic’ era.

It claimed common infections, such as chlamydia, will become killers without immediate solutions to the growing crisis.

Bacteria can become drug resistant when people take incorrect doses of antibiotics or if they are given out unnecessarily.  

Figures estimate that superbugs will kill 10 million people each year by 2050, with patients succumbing to once harmless bugs.

Around 700,000 people already die yearly due to drug-resistant infections including tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria across the world. 

Concerns have repeatedly been raised that medicine will be taken back to the ‘dark ages’ if antibiotics are rendered ineffective in the coming years.

In addition to existing drugs becoming less effective, there have only been one or two new antibiotics developed in the last 30 years.

But overprescribing antibiotics and giving too many to farm animals has allowed some bacteria to learn how to survive routine treatments like penicillin.

Dame Sally made the comments alongside the economist Lord Jim O’Neill, who produced a report on AMB in 2016.

She said: ‘Jim’s work showed that at least 700,000 people a year are dying from infections that are untreatable.

‘There are horror stories like the woman in the US with gonorrhoea who was resistant to 22 or 23 drugs.

‘And in this country, we have people who are dying of resistant infections – or those who don’t die but double their time in hospital and they have that morbidity and suffering and it costs the NHS at this time at least £180 million every year.’

Lord O’Neill’s 2016 review concluded that AMB could one day be a bigger threat to mankind than cancer.

He criticised the government for not prioritising action on antibiotic resistance, and pointed the finger at pharmaceutical companies for not developing new drugs.

Dame Sally added that companies were being ‘short-sighted’ by not creating new therapies to be used in future.

And she raised concerns about cuts to sexual health funding, warning that the common sexually transmitted infection gonorrhoea is becoming increasingly difficult to treat.

‘I am very worried about our sexual health services,’ she said.

‘The information I am receiving suggests that savings are too great and we are seeing a degradation of many of those sexual health services.’

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