Antibiotic drug resistance attributed to its misuse

Professor Tsiri Agbenyega, Dean of the School of Medical Sciences (SMS) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), has attributed the upsurge of antibiotic resistance to its misuse by health professionals and the general public as well as poor quality of some of the drugs.

He said the present situation in the country with anti microbial resistance, allows infections to progress and kill as a result of misuse of the drugs and their low potency.

He said anti-microbial drugs that have been used successfully for over six decades become useless since strains of drug resistant bacteria have been disseminated through the global ecosystems to produce diseases and seriously interfere with therapy.

Professor Agbenyega was delivering the keynote address at a day's symposium organised by the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) in collaboration with the Human Resource Division of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) on the theme: "Modern trends in anti-microbial therapy" in Kumasi on Friday.

He said apart from the action and inaction of health professionals to educate their clients on the correct use of anti-microbial and the dangers of not taking the drugs on full course, the developing world, where resistance is common, have contributed to the emergence and dissemination of such resistant and dangerous disease-causing bacteria.

He said some hospitals are breeding grounds for such drug resistant infectious diseases as patients often transfer the microbes they are carrying to others and this has become possible because of conditions such as overcrowding, lack of hygiene, poor or non-existent hospital infection control and lack of sufficient surveillance for infection prone areas, adding "this state of affairs require a careful study and solution".

On the HIV/AIDS, Professor Agbenyega said the government should be able to provide the antiretroviral drugs, which will help to prolong the lives of patients and thereby reduce the occurrence of opportunistic infection by taking a cue from the past and use the drugs judiciously in order not to create resistance strains, which would rival the epidemic itself.

Dr Jacob Plange-Rhule, President of the GMA, later in an interview with the media, said antibiotic resistance could be traced to some cultural perceptions of the general public that all diseases need antibiotics for treatment and thus, either buy them across the counter without prescription and take the drugs without proper dosing or influencing doctors to prescribe the drugs for them.

Apart from this, he said, the application of antibiotic to open superficial sores also contributes to the resistance problem and called on the public to desist from the practice.