To mark the date, Infarmed is holding a “webinar” where data on antibiotic consumption in Portugal and European countries will be presented, within the scope of the ESAC-Net (European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Consumption Network) surveillance network, of the European Center for Prevention and Disease Control (ECDC), says the agency in a statement.

Reducing the total consumption of antibiotics in humans by 20% by 2030, with 2019 as a reference, is the goal established in the document “One Health”, approved in June last year by the 27 within the scope of combating resistance to antimicrobials.

Another goal is that at least 65% of the total consumption of antibiotics in humans belongs to the Access group, those with the lowest impact in terms of potential development of resistance.

“In 2023, the consumption of antibiotics in the Access category in Portugal was 63%, having improved compared to the reference year by around one percentage point”, according to the statement.

The World Health Organization (WHO) classification of antimicrobials, Access, Watch and Reserve (AWaRe), defines groups of antibiotics based on their greater or lesser impact in terms of potential development of resistance.

The National Medicines Authority also says that in community pharmacies the dispensing of antibiotics increased between 2022 and 2023, going from an average of 17.1 defined daily doses per thousand inhabitants per day (DHD) to 18 DHD, and that its preliminary data on 20.5 DHD in the first half of 2024 indicates that the upward trend continues.

As for hospital consumption of antibiotics in Portugal, both in 2022 and 2023 this corresponded to a value of 1.7 DHD, preliminary data for the first half of 2024 revealing a slight upward trend (1.8 DHD).

“These data reinforce the need for a concerted intervention by everyone involved with the aim of ensuring the appropriate use of antibiotics, considering that the therapeutic arsenal has been little strengthened in recent years and that current medications are at risk of losing their effectiveness against the growth of bacterial resistance”.

In 2019, the WHO declared antimicrobial resistance as one of the 10 biggest global public health threats facing humanity.

In May, in connection with updating the list of bacteria that threaten human health due to antibiotic resistance, the United Nations health agency noted that the problem causes around 1.27 million direct deaths annually and contributes to a further 4.19 million of other deaths.