CANBERRA, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government has been urged to escalate the war on superbugs by cracking down on repeat prescriptions for common antibiotics.
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC), which advises the government on pharmaceutical drugs, has recommended the removal of repeat options for common antibiotics.
Under the current system, prescriptions for antibiotics such as Amoxicillan are usually issued by General Practitioners (GPs) with an automatic repeat prescription even when it is not medically necessary.
The PBAC recommended that repeat prescriptions no longer be subsidized by the government under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and that patients be required to return to a GP for a new prescription in moves they say will help reduce the spread of superbugs.
"This is a really important advance in moving towards more responsible use of antibiotics in Australia," said John Turnidge, a senior medical adviser at the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare, according to The Australian.
"I'm very pleased that the PBAC has finally aligned with our national guidelines and we look forward to even greater efforts nationally to address the problem of the overuse of antibiotics.
"Anything we can do to reduce the number of scripts and the number of repeats, and overall the total volume that we use, will be extremely welcome as we move towards trying to get responsible antibiotic prescribing across the board in Australia."
Approximately 25 percent of patients who are given a repeat prescription make use of it, with some even stockpiling them for later use without seeing a doctor.
