It shows that in 2020, Danes used 22 percent – just over a fifth – less antibiotics than ten years ago.
It has succeeded through various initiatives to lower the use of antibiotics. Among other things, the doctors prescribe prescriptions to the patients, but say that they have to wait to receive the medicine.
– Relatively many infectious diseases go away on their own, especially if you are relatively healthy, says Brian Kristensen, who is section leader at the department of infection epidemiology and prevention at SSI.
Therefore, it may pay for some to wait and see if the body itself can fight the disease.
Compared with 2019, Danes’ antibiotic consumption has fallen by seven percent. And that’s a clear effect of the corona pandemic, in which the shutdowns of society kept many infectious diseases dormant, according to SSI.
The use of antibiotics in animals has also generally fallen over the last ten years.
The use of the so-called critically important antibiotics has been completely phased out. This is done so that people can benefit from the antibiotic instead.
– It is an interesting milestone that we are now completely free from the use of this type of antibiotic in the animals, says Birgitte Borck Høg, who is a specialist consultant at the Food Institute at DTU.
If too many antibiotics are used in animals that humans eat, humans may end up developing resistance to the antibiotic. And it will be a problem if the same type of antibiotic is to be used to treat people, says Birgitte Borck Høg.
Source: The Nordic Page