Minister: "Antibiotics need to be used wisely"
No one wanted to live in a post-antibiotic world where diseases that were once easily treated, killed thousands, South African Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi said on Monday.
Motsoaledi was speaking about the use of antibiotics during World Antibiotics Awareness Week which kicked off on Monday.
Without effective antibiotics, a growing list of infections was becoming harder to treat. These included pneumonia, urinary tract infections, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea and other sexually transmitted diseases.
As countries around the world battled with creating solutions to drug resistant bacteria, which had the potential to destroy the victories made in modern medicine, Motsoaledi said the focus was on ensuring that healthcare systems were able to “preserve the power of antibiotics through appropriate and rational use”.
Turning the lens on how South Africa was already battling with drug resistant TB, HIV and other forms of antibiotic resistant bacteria, he said: “Without effective antibiotics, a growing list of infections is becoming harder to treat.”
He said time was of the essence as drug resistant bacteria could threaten the “significant health gains we have made in treating and preventing these diseases in the last 5 years”.
A World Health Organisation report launched this week has shed light on how “there is widespread public misunderstanding about antibiotic resistance”.
“Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in response to the use of antibiotics,” Motsoaledi explained.
Education around the correct use of antibiotics was needed, he said, as antibiotics need to be used responsibly because inappropriate use could lead to increased drug resistance.
“We are calling on all citizens and health care professionals to take serious the call to reduce our use of antibiotics before we allow serious infections to become untreatable and lose millions of lives from antibiotic resistance.”
In South Africa, the impact of prevention of infection through childhood vaccines had been demonstrated recently, in particular the prevention afforded by the pneumococcal conjugate and rotovirus vaccines, the Health Department said.
“Overall child mortality rates have declined substantially in the past five years from diseases related to these two vaccines, specifically diarrhoea with dehydration and pneumonia as well as hospitalisation and deaths from these two illnesses.
“However this increasing access comes with the paradoxical threat of increasing organism resistance due to inappropriate use. So we have a unique global health dilemma; how do we increase access where it is needed and preserve the effectiveness of these antibiotics by restricting their use to appropriate illnesses and health care settings.”
Motsoaledi added that many people continued to think antibiotics were useful for treating the common cold and flu, which were actually viruses, not bacteria.
He called on citizens and healthcare professionals to think carefully before they used or prescribed antibiotics to treat a condition and to play a role in strengthening the country’s healthcare system.
World Antibiotics Awareness Week runs from November 16-22.