Community antibiotics dispensing data, 2014 to 2020
Thank you for your request dated 10 December 2021 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to community antibiotic dispensings. You requested:
Antibiotic dispensing data covering the years 2014 to 2020, broken down by year.
- Total community abiotic dispensings.
- This same data broken down into:
- Systemic vv oral abiotics vv topical
- For the oral antibiotics a breakdown of dispensings by antibiotic class
- We are specifically interested in the breakdown of the of the penicillin group into amoxycillin, amoxy/clav and other penicillin's
Please find data for your request attached with this response letter. We have extracted data by calendar year, formulation, total units, total patients, number of dispensings and number of prescriptions dispensed for therapeutic group 2 (TG2) 'Antibacterials' dispensed via the community as confirmed via email with you on 15 December 2021.
Please note that we approach our assessment of requests for information under the OIA on the basis that once we release the information to you it becomes available to any other party in that exact form (whether by you distributing it to others or by virtue of us receiving the same request from a different third party).
Where fewer than 10 people or dispensings are counted, we have changed the number to "<10" as we believe this is necessary to protect the privacy of these people (section 9(2)(a) of the OIA).
As required under the OIA, we also considered whether, in the circumstances, the withholding of this information was outweighed by other considerations which render it desirable, in the public interest, to make this information available. In this case we did not consider that the public interest outweighed the reasons for withholding the information.
Please note you have the right, by way of complaint under section 28(3) of the OIA to an Ombudsman, to seek an investigation and review of our decision.
We trust that this information answers your queries. We are making our information more freely available, so we now publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.