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Pharmacists have a key role to play in helping to reduce antibiotic prescribing rates, says Dr Kieran Hand, consultant pharmacist anti-infectives, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust and RPS spokesperson on antibiotics.

His comments follow the publication of a report by Public Health England's English Surveillance Programme for Antimicrobial Utilisation and Resistance, which shows there was a 6 per cent increase in the combined prescribing of antibiotics by GPs and hospitals in 2010-13.

Primary care offers scope for reducing unnecessary prescribing, he says, because over 60 per cent of patients with upper respiratory tract infections receive antibiotics. €There is an important role for prescribing adviser pharmacists in CCGs to be trained to deliver educational messages to GP practices on how to safely reduce prescribing and to support GPs with benchmarking of prescribing data.€