(30th September, 2014; Business Wire India); Fortis Healthcare announced on last friday (26th sept) that Fortis Mulund, one of its major hospitals in Mumbai has been conferred the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) Award for ‘The Medical Team of the Year 2014.’ The honour was bestowed on the hospital for its outstanding “Antibiotic Review Program – and Antibiotic Restriction Policy.”
Rampant and uncontrolled use of antibiotics has been rendering many of them progressively ineffective against microbes routinely associated with hospital infections. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has now cited this as a major problem and has declared it a global public health emergency. The WHO has been calling for judicious antibiotic use and exercising caution in conserving the world’s armamentarium of known antibiotics.
Congratulating the team at Fortis Mulund, for winning the prestigious BMJ Award, Mr. Aditya Vij, CEO, Fortis Healthcare Limited, said, “Antibiotics are a precious weapon in our arsenal against disease. We need to conserve them through controlled use and pay utmost heed to the dictum ‘the right drug for the right bug’. With this in mind, Fortis has instituted a formalised Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) programme at all our hospitals with outstanding results. We are making significant headway and a definite impact in our hospitals and I commend the efforts of our Doctors, Nurses and Pharmacy, in this endeavour.”
The Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) program at Fortis Mulund was set up more than five years back and has gained significant traction in the last two years with the rationalisation in the use of life-saving antibiotics brought about with the unconditional support of Fortis clinicians, in anti-microbial prescription practices.
Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD), an international pharmaceutical major is providing valuable know how and guidance in the execution of the programme.
The ultimate goal of the program is to educate the community regarding the misuse of antibiotics and address the global outbreak of anti-microbial resistance for the safety of our patients and the larger community.
The program strives for the de-escalation in the consumption of restricted antibiotics with concomitant benefits of reduced toxicity, side effects and costs. The ultimate goal is to address global outbreak of anti-microbial resistance. The vision is to bring about a change in the antibiotic prescription pattern amongst clinicians; preserve the ecology of the hospital with a focus on the safety of patients and the community.
The BMJ Awards are UK’s premier medical awards, launched in 2009, recognising and celebrating the inspirational work done by doctors and their teams. Organised by The BMJ, one of the world's leading medical journals, the awards reflect their mission to improve patient outcomes and showcase the very best healthcare in the UK. BMJ Awards India recognizes excellence in healthcare in our country by felicitating individuals, organisations, and initiatives that demonstrate outstanding and measurable contributions across the healthcare community.
This year, the BMJ India team received almost 700 high-quality nominations with unenviable task of bringing these down to 30 over 2 phases; the thirty finalists across ten categories presented their work to an esteemed panel of judges. The awards were conferred in the presence of more than 500 of India’s most senior healthcare professionals, top healthcare influencers and decision makers.
