why cant you buy antibiotics from a chemist..or can you?

I'm guessing it's because most of the time they're unnecessary but people want them because they don't understand that they won't help viruses. Overuse/missuse of antibiotics increases resistance of bacteria to antibiotics, resulting in MRSA type bugs etc.

(Hopefully some sciency type will give a better response which doesn't prove me totally wrong!)

Oh LP are you still feeling crap? have you got a walk in centre you can go to, they'll be able to prescribe something there. ?

Green stuff is where I'm at too, it's horrible isn't it! sit in a steamy room, and breathe in the vapours, that'll help lossen up the green stuff and make it easier to cough up. Hope you are feeling much better soon.

I understand your point, but why can't you just buy them over the counter so that the purchase can be monitored by the pharmacist? You can buy them over the counter in Thailand, and I've been here 4 years and only bought them 3 times - twice for tummy bugs lasting 5 days or more and pharmacist in Boots said antibiotics were needed to kill bacteria and once just before I flew back to UK for my wedding and had just had a wisdom tooth infection and knew if I got another before the wedding I wouldn't be able to get seen easily by a dentist in UK.

I am not one to self diagnose but there are certain times when you know you need them.

I was reading up on NHS direct this week (link below), because my husband is coughing up horrid stuff as well, and they said they now realise most cases of chest infection (acute bronchitis as it normally is) is actually virus related, so anti biotics wouldn't work anyway.

I would go into a walk in centre (if you can't get to a gp) to see if this is what you have, or whether it is something else

http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=526&sectionId=11

Firstly, sorry you're not well. Hope you can get to see someone at a walk-in centre or similar.

I'm not a medic but H is a GP and his answer is that antibiotics are actually pretty strong medication and a lot of the time you need to know exactly what strain of bug someone has before prescribing - it's not a case of one size fits all - so eg they do throat swabs, or other tests, then when the results are in they can give you the best suited anti-b. Plus sometimes they can cause nasty side-effects, and it's best to avoid that if possible.

He has a lot of problems with people insisting they need anti-b's when they've got a cold - in fact one patient made a complaint about him because they came in with what was clearly a cold, he recommended hydration and steam and time, they said that wasn't on and why wouldn't he give them anti-b's and sent an angry letter. ? I'm in no way suggesting you're like that - green muck sounds horrid! - but if antibiotics were freely available over the counter, a heck of a lot of people would buy them that really don't need them and we'd end up with more resistant strains.