Antibiotic resistance endangers modern medicine

Dr Sylvester Anemana, Chief Director of the Ministry of Health on Tuesday said antibiotic resistance hindered the control of infectious diseases, increased the cost of health care and endangered the achievements of modern medicine.

He said without effective antibiotic treatment, many standard medical treatments would fail, or turn into very high risk procedures.

“The need to tackle antibiotic resistance now cannot be over emphasized,” Dr Anemana said in a statement read on his behalf in Accra by Mrs Joycelyn Azeez, Director Procurement and Supply of the Ministry, at a stakeholder workshop on the Action on Antibiotic Resistance (ReACT) – Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) Project.

“Without agent, coordinated action, we would be heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill,” the Chief Director said.

“For Ghana, this phenomenon could have a dire consequence on the poor and vulnerable; as well as the affluent,” he added.

He observed that efforts at controlling and containing resistance had been designed from a broad perspective, involving all stakeholders, including CSOs, the media as well as within the framework of regional and global networking and information sharing.

“In Ghana, data from Antibiotic, Drug Use Monitory and Evaluation of resistance project indicate there is a growing resistance of bacteria to commonly available medicines including third generation antibiotics.

“Indeed, the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital intensive Care Unit of the Child Health Department in 2012 was closed down due to the outbreak of Multidrug Resistance Staph Aureus,” he said.

He said the discovery of antibiotic had greatly improved infectious diseases therapy, and had decreased death and illness due to infectious diseases over the years.

He said recent development, however, indicated that there was a growing threat to these modest achievements due to Antibiotic Resistance (ABR).

Dr Anemana said antibiotic resistance had become, and continued to be an important public health problem that threatened the effective prevention and treatment of an ever-increasing range of infections caused by bacteria.

He said the problem of resistance to antibiotic had been attributed to many factors; primarily among them was the abuse of the use of antibiotics.

“What is worrying is the fact that ABR is high among the very common and affordable essential antibiotics available.

“Common antibiotics such as tetracycline and ampicillin are no more in the essential list of Ghana primarily due to resistance by bacterial to them,” he said.

He warned that antibiotic resistance was also not a country phenomenon, but a regional and global health threat.

A World Health Organization’s Report on global surveillance of antimicrobial resistance shows that, there are about 48,000 new cases of multidrug’ resistant tuberculosis.

Dr Anemana said there were high proportions of antibiotic resistance in bacteria that caused common infections, such as, urinary tract infections and pneumonia.

He noted that the emergence and spread of resistance to antibiotics and treatment failures due to resistance to third generations cephalosporin’s had been reported.

He said available data also suggested continued expansion of access to antibiotic resistance treatment ART was associated with a rise in HIV drug resistance.

Professor Mercy Newman, Chairman of the National Policy Platform for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) called for a review of the treatment guidelines in the face of new development on ABR.

Dr Kwame Ohene Buabeng, Deputy Chairman, AMR, said antibiotic resistance was an important public problem, and cautioned that the fears of having untreatable infections in hospitals was a reality.

Dr Buabeng, who is also a Senior Lecturer/Clinical Pharmacologist, Faculty Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, said pragmatic efforts from government and various stakeholders which had been initiated to contain the situation must be sustained.

Mr George Hedidor, ReAct – CSOs Project National Project Coordinator gave an overview of the project and lauded SIDA and the CSOs for the project.

He urged CSOs and the media to intensify their efforts in educating the public on the dangers of misusing antibiotics.

Mr Brian Asare, Programme Officer, Ghana National Drugs Programme, Ministry of Health, said a comprehensive national AMR policy, which would promote responsible use of antibiotics would soon be placed before Parliament.

The ReAct project under the auspices of the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency (SIDA) was launched in 2013, in support of national efforts at containing the phenomenon on antimicrobial resistance in Ghana.

To drive the process, a platform of key stakeholders with interest in antimicrobial resistance to champion this agenda in the country was created.

The project sought to strengthen and build the capacity of CSOs, to address aspects of antibiotic resistance at the community level.