Professor Wendy Reid pledges to help protect antibiotics

On this years’ European Antibiotic Awareness Day, Health Education England’s Wendy Reid has become an Antibiotic Guardian, pledging to help make better use of antibiotics and help to save these vital medicines from becoming obsolete.

The threat posed by antimicrobial resistance to the future of healthcare and modern medicine is widely recognised. Health Education England is responsible for improving the education and training health and care workers can access about antimicrobial resistance, and has been undertaking a number of programmes of work to support this including:

• developing an introductory free e-learning module, Reducing Antimicrobial Resistance to support all health and social care staff understands the threats posed by antimicrobial resistance and ways they can help to tackle it. 
• working jointly with Public Health England to ensure that the antimicrobial resistance competencies are embedded into relevant the curricula.
• setting out a plan for better embed these into undergraduate and postgraduate curricula.

Professor Wendy Reid, Director of Education and Quality and Medical Director, said:

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats facing us today - without effective antibiotics, many routine treatments will become increasingly dangerous.

A key part of fighting this threat is ensuring that healthcare workers and students are able to access proper and up-to-date education on responsible antimicrobial prescribing and antimicrobial stewardship. Health Education England has been working to improve the training available and raise awareness of its importance.

On this European Antibiotic Awareness Day, I’m proud to be an Antibiotic Guardian and help protect vital medicines from this threat.