European Antibiotic Awareness Day: 18 November 2012

News 16/11/2012

European Antibiotic Awareness DayThe European Medicines Agency supports European Antibiotic Awareness Day, which is taking place on Sunday 18 November 2012.

European Antibiotic Awareness Day is an annual European public-health initiative that aims to raise awareness of the threat to public health and animal health of antibiotic resistance and the importance of prudent use of antibiotics.

New European Union-wide data released by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to mark the day demonstrates that antibiotic resistance remains a major European and global public-health problem and is, for a large part, driven by the inappropriate use of antibiotics.

In the field of antibiotics, the European Medicines Agency's main role is to evaluate applications for the authorisation of antibiotic medicines, both for humans and for animals, and to ensure that their conditions of use take the importance of following official recommendations on the appropriate use of antibacterial agents into consideration.

The Agency is concerned about the increasing levels of resistance to antibiotics in humans and animals and is engaged in a number of initiatives aiming to tackle this problem.

In 2012, the Agency has contributed to the global initiative to combat antibiotic resistance in the following areas:

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