Some family doctors in Australia and the UK are now prescribing fewer antibiotics following successful trials of measures intended to curb over-prescribing habits.
Overuse of antibiotics is contributing to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria, which now kill at least globally each year.
Research has found that many doctors still prescribe antibiotics for viral infections even though these drugs only work for bacterial infections. Australian GPs, for example, write around annually for viral respiratory infections like colds and flus.
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To address this problem, the Australian government last year sent letters to GPs whose antibiotic prescribing rates were in the top 30 per cent for their region. These letters were written in four different formats to see what worked best.
Financial incentive
The most effective letter declared in bold text: 鈥淵ou prescribe more antibiotics than x per cent of prescribers in your region鈥� and displayed a large graph to illustrate this information visually. A government report released last week found that GPs who received this letter over the following year.
The UK government has tried another approach: financial reward. In 2015, it began offering local health areas an if they improved a range of measures, including cutting antibiotic prescribing by GPs by 1 per cent or more.
A study published last week found that GPs began writing for respiratory infections soon after the initiative was introduced.
The UK scheme will now offer , including reducing inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for urinary tract infections.
Read more: Why the latest advice on stopping antibiotics is long overdue
