Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many deaths attributable to antibiotic-resistant infections occurred in England in each of the last five years; and of those how many occurred on the NHS estate.

The information requested is not held or routinely published.

The UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) English Surveillance Programme for Antimicrobial Utilisation and Resistance (ESPAUR) publishes surveillance data on antibiotic-resistant infections, including estimates of 30-day all-cause mortality following resistant bloodstream infections. However, these figures are not a measure of deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance and should not be interpreted as deaths caused by antibiotic-resistant infections. This surveillance data is available on the GOV.UK website.

The UKHSA publishes case-fatality statistics for healthcare-associated infections, which are available on the GOV.UK website, including methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. However, these cannot be used to determine deaths attributable to antibiotic resistance because they do not distinguish the effect of resistance from other factors such as underlying illness, age, comorbidities, or the infection itself.

There is no breakdown of the statistics by National Health Service estate.

The ESPAUR’s 2024 to 2025 report included a breakdown by hospital- and community-onset infection but did not include place of death and cannot determine the proportion of deaths occurring in hospital.

The UKHSA is now developing the capability to produce annual estimates of deaths attributable to antibiotic-resistant bloodstream infections as part of the United Kingdom’s 2024 to 2029 national action plan for antimicrobial resistance, which is available on the GOV.UK website.