World Health Day, celebrated annually April 7th commemorates the founding of the World Health Organization; it seeks to promote any action that improves health, among people of all ages and from all backgrounds.
This year, the World Health Day theme is “Combating Antimicrobial Resistance”. Antimicrobial Resistance occurs when medications which were once used to treat or cure an infection is no longer effective against the microbial organism causing the infection due to medication abuse and misuse. We live in an era in which we depend heavily on antimicrobial medications such as antibiotics and antivirals to treat conditions that decades ago, or even a few years ago, in the case of HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis, would have proved fatal.
Clinical trials have supplied sufficient knowledge about appropriate antibiotic use; antibiotics are effective only against certain organisms, must be taken in a particular dose for a specified frequency and duration (e.g. every six (6) hours for five (5) to (7) days), and are ineffective against viruses. The myth that all infections respond to antibiotics needs to be corrected. When a patient with a viral respiratory infection gets better after taking antibiotics such as amoxicillin; this improvement is usually due to the natural course of the illness and not to the antibiotics.
We must all be very concerned about anti-microbial resistance as infections caused by resistant organisms often do not respond to the standard treatment, resulting in prolonged illness and a greater risk of death. Antimicrobial resistance is a serious problem that strikes at the core of infectious disease control and has the potential to halt and possibly even roll back progress with the control of the most serious infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis, Malaria and HIV just to name a few. While the development of resistance is a natural response of microbial organisms, it can be prevented and contained through careful and appropriate antimicrobial use. Antimicrobial resistance can be managed and prevented through a multi-pronged approach with comprehensive well regulated health systems, integrated monitoring of antimicrobial use and resistance, educating pharmacists, dispensers, patients and the public in general and the regulation of antibiotic use in the communities and hospitals.
Healthy policy-makers and planners, the public, medical practitioners, pharmacists, and the pharmaceutical industry must act together and take responsibility for combating anti-microbial resistance. “We will have no cures for tomorrow, if, today, we take insufficient or no action at all”.
“Combating drug resistance” is everybody’s business, find out how we can do more, join Health Matters host, Miss Imterniza McCartney and a panel of Health professionals live today at 11:30am-12:30pm today on Radio Turks & Caicos with a repeat at 7pm.
