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Scotland’s health secretary Nicola Sturgeon has revealed that the government is to make an additional £1.25m available to tackle hospital infections such as the superbug MRSA.
The latest funding is part of a new action plan designed to tackle the growing problem of hospital-acquired infections, which show great resistance to antibiotics.
The scheme identifies a host of measures that health boards will take to tackle this resistance and will also lead to the introduction of a surveillance regime to monitor the situation in Scotland’s hospitals.
The initiative will encourage a cautious approach to prescribing antibiotics through improved diagnosis of illnesses and education of NHS staff, and will monitor organisms which are resistant to the drugs, such as MRSA.
Ms Sturgeon said: “Resistance to antibiotics is recognised internationally as a major threat to public health and patient safety and this growing problem is something the Scottish government takes very seriously.”
She went on: “One of the most important things that can be done in the fight against hospital superbugs is to stamp out unnecessary use of antibiotics.
“If you have a cold or a virus, in the vast majority of cases you don’t need to take antibiotics. In fact, doing so unnecessarily can increase the virulence and spread of infections like MRSA and C diff, which we all know can have a devastating effect.”
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