How Helperby aims to enhance Antibiotic Stewardship.
The fundamental sentiment of Antibiotic Stewardship is that antibiotics are a precious and finite resource which must be used responsibly.
Doron and Davidson (2011) identified three main goals of Antibiotic Stewardship:
- “Optimise therapy for individual patients” - Helperby’s new combination treatment for highly resistant, difficult to treat bacterial infections gives clinicians the option of effective treatment with a lower dose of familiar approved drugs, thereby reducing side-effects.
- “Prevent overuse, misuse and abuse”- By using rational combinations of antibiotics, it will be feasible to reduce the emergence of resistance. This approach has been successfully used in other infections such as tuberculosis and AIDS.
- “Minimise development of resistance at patient and community levels.” - Helperby’s combining of synergistic anti-infectives protects old, last
resort antibiotics by making it many orders of magnitude harder for resistance to develop than if they were given alone.
These values, which ensure that medical/surgical care can continue to rely on effective antibiotics into the future, was the reason Helperby was founded.
