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Doctors who prescribe hazardous amounts of ­antibiotics should face being struck off, a health regulator warns.

Ten million prescriptions a year are being dished out ­unnecessarily with many patients seeking out doctors who are a “soft touch”, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) claims.

Overprescribing the drug is ­triggering a rise in resistant bugs, which puts patients at risk of developing infections that cannot be treated.

Surgery, chemotherapy and ­transplants can all become impossible without the support of antibiotics.

Nice is publishing radical guidelines that say doctors must say no to pushy patients who want antibiotics for unsuitable illnesses such as colds.

GPs or hospital doctors who hand out too many antibiotics should be referred to the General Medical Council, and pharmacists and doctors should snoop on staff, it suggests.

Professor Mark Baker, Nice director of the centre for clinical practice, said doctors must be held to account for giving in to patient demands.

He went on: “If we don’t do it now we’ll have to rethink the whole basis of medicine.

“If antibiotics no longer work we’ll have to rediscover how to treat infections surgically,” he warned.

(Image: Reuters)

“It’s more serious now – we’ve gone another 15 years without new classes of ­antibiotics being produced.”

Nine out of 10 GPs say they feel pressurised to prescribe antibiotics and more than 40 million prescriptions are written out a year.

Nice also plans on issuing advice for patients next year.

But the Royal College of GPs hit back at suggestions doctors should be hauled before the GMC.

Vice chair Dr Tim Ballard said: “The growing resistance to antibiotics is a global threat. We need a societal change in attitudes. Any suggestion that hard-pressed GPs will be reported to the regulator is counterproductive.”