Antimicrobial resistance, known as AMR, occurs when bugs including bacteria and viruses no longer respond to the drugs made to kill them.
If these antibiotics stop working, minor infections such as a skin wound could prove fatal.
‘This is a major area that Jersey will have to keep an oversight of because if it goes wrong, it will be a massive problem,’ said Theo Knight-Jones, who revealed that he is leaving his post as Jersey’s States Vet to work in a senior animal scientist role in Tanzania, later this month.
‘There is massive overlap in the antibiotics we use in veterinary and human sectors. We talk about “one health” and 70% of pathogens – causes of disease – evolved from animal diseases.
‘So Jersey will need to make sure it keeps up with antimicrobial resistance.
‘The antimicrobial resistance in animals can either pass to humans from the bacteria which an animal may be carrying, or it can pass to humans via food.
‘The management of human health needs to incorporate controls [to monitor] and if necessary, to reduce the amount of antibiotics used in animals.’
In January, the UK Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock, said AMR was as big a threat to humanity as climate change, and told an audience at the World Economic Forum: ‘We are on the cusp of a world where a simple skin graze could be deadly.’
Mr Knight-Jones added: ‘The health sector in Jersey will oversee what is being done in terms of human health and the veterinary sector needs to maintain oversight of what is being done in the veterinary world because although we’ve got separate regulatory worlds, the antibiotic resistance genes don’t know that.’
He said an example of how the same germs can cycle between animals and humans was the MRSA super bug.
He added: ‘We already have antimicrobial resistance in Jersey and if you don’t do anything about it, more and more of your antibiotics become unable to treat the germs you want to treat.
‘There needs to be a good overview of the amount of antibiotics people are giving animals in Jersey and the Dairy have already started doing research on this,’ added Mr Knight-Jones, who will leave for Tanzania in two weeks’ time, having spent nearly three years as Jersey’s States Vet.
A States spokeswoman confirmed that an interim States Vet ‘will be appointed on a five-month basis’, but declined to give more details.
