Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to develop a sepsis strategy.

The current UK National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance discusses how we have stewardship programmes in place for both primary and secondary care settings, comprising a range of activities and resources to ensure antimicrobials are used appropriately and to improve prescribing behaviours. A copy of the plan is available at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6261392d8fa8f523bf22ab9e/UK_AMR_5_year_national_action_plan.pdf

Our stewardship activities are not just focused on reducing prescribing but also on ensuring timely treatment where rapid treatment with antibiotics is essential to save lives and reduce the long-term consequences of serious infection, for example from sepsis.

Since publication of the 2015 cross-system Sepsis Action Plan, we have increased the number of patients being screened and treated for sepsis and, importantly, through the combined sepsis and AMR Commissioning for Quality and Innovation, increased the number of inpatients who have a clinical antibiotic review between 24 and 72 hours, reducing the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics.