More awareness needed on dangers of antibiotics’ misuse – Health Minister

Using antibiotics indiscriminately for every ailment is a practice, and more awareness is needed, amid concerns that persons can develop antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antimicrobial resistance is accelerated when the presence of antibiotics and antifungals pressure bacteria and fungi to adapt.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony underscored on Friday that sensitisation is needed both at the level of health institutions and patients, in educating about antibiotics misuse.
He added that if antimicrobial resistance is developed, then the current drugs would be unable to cure many of the diseases.
“One of the things we have to do is start working on becoming wiser on how we prescribe antibiotics to patients. Patents themselves have to be more cognisant of the importance of how you use antibiotics, when you use antibiotics and not for any disease. This is a very important thing. If we’re continuing the way we’re using antibiotics and resistance develops for the drugs we have, then we will have serious problems,” Dr Anthony explained.
While antimicrobial resistance has been occurring globally, the Minister said persons continue to use antibiotics in cases where it would not provide relief.
“We have seen over the years that people have been using antibiotics widely, especially in conditions where antibiotics would not help. If someone has a viral infection and you use an antibiotic, then that antibiotic would not kill the virus. But we have seen people use antibiotics in a very indiscriminate way.”
With trends showing increasing indiscriminate use of antibiotics, the Health Minister shared that some microbes that are typically susceptible to antibiotics have developed resistance.
Antibiotics and antifungals kill some germs that cause infections, but they also kill helpful germs that protect our body from infection. The antimicrobial-resistant germs survive and multiply. These surviving germs have resistance traits in their DNA that can spread to other germs.
Antimicrobial resistance is a naturally occurring process. However, increases in antimicrobial resistance are linked to a combination of germs exposed to antibiotics and antifungals, and the spread of those germs and their resistance mechanisms.
The CDC outlined, “When already hard-to-treat germs have the right combination of resistance mechanisms, it can make all antibiotics or antifungals ineffective, resulting in untreatable infections. Alarmingly, antimicrobial-resistant germs can share their resistance mechanisms with other germs that have not been exposed to antibiotics or antifungals.”
Researchers estimated that AMR in bacteria caused an estimated 1.27 million deaths in 2019. A global action plan to tackle the growing problem of resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines was endorsed at the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly in May 2015.
World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) is a global campaign that is celebrated annually to improve awareness and understanding of AMR and encourage best practices among the public, One Health stakeholders and policymakers, who all play a critical role in reducing the further emergence and spread of AMR. It was observed from November 18-24, 2022. (G12)