Dr. Michael O'Dwyer:

Certainly in the hospital sector, all of the diagnostic tests and individuals needed to treat these people when they come in as emergency cases are available.

We do not have enough GPs per head of population. We have a plan in place to draw level with the Scottish ratio, and we have a geographical disparity in GP provision. One issue I wanted to raise is that in our messaging rarely do we deal with issues in isolation in healthcare and medicine. One of the issues we also want to convey, which is a very important part of preventing sepsis, is that we do not take actions at a population level to promote antimicrobial resistance. We also have to convey a message to people that common viral illnesses do not merit antibiotic provision. We measure through our local hospital and through GPs how often we use antibiotics and whether usage is going up or down. We have seen in recent years a drop-off in those resistant bugs such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, and vancomycin-resistant enterococci, VRE, and others through more prudent use of antibiotics. The message we give is we want to increase awareness of sepsis and we want early intervention to promote better outcomes but on a population level we do not want people to resort to antibiotics for every single potential infection that is there, especially viral infections which do not warrant antibiotics.