Antibiotic resistance: Experts warn against overuse of antibiotics

Show concern at livestock, poultry meat being raised through medicines

ISLAMABAD:

Medical experts on Tuesday expressed concerns at increased use of antibiotic medicines, which they said was boosting bacteria’s resistance power in human bodies and rendering such medicines useless.

Healthcare professionals and rights advocates spoke at a seminar organised by the Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan (CRCP) to mark the World Consumer Rights Day, which is themed around “antibiotic resistance” this year.

Experts said most Pakistanis were becoming resistant to antibiotics by their therapeutic misuse or consuming meat from livestock and poultry raised with the routine use of antibiotics meant to treat human illnesses.

They observed that most patients in Pakistan were being treated through antibiotic medicines and that patients also use antibiotics without prescription and sometime do not complete the course of treatment. This practice increases the resistance power of bacteria and a stage comes where antibiotics become useless, they said.

“In Pakistan, more than half of antibiotic use is unnecessary and avoidable,” said Dr Muhammad Kamran Khan, who is associated with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative. He said doctors were prescribing antibiotics in order to gain early results and establish credibility with today’s consumers of healthcare. “A great majority of important antibiotics sold in Pakistan are also sold for poultry and livestock as growth promoters and routine disease prevention,” Khan said.

He explained that when the producers of livestock and poultry routinely administer antibiotics to their herds and flocks, bacteria develop resistance and then spread to consumers of meat, compounding the problem of antibiotic resistance.



“By taking presently effective antibiotics for granted, we are heading for a post-antibiotic era in which these most important drugs stop working anymore and patients fail to survive common diseases and infections,” he said.

Rabia Shabbir, a CRCP research fellow, Rabia Shabbir, said apart from stringent government regulations, a strong consumer voice was required to urge the livestock and poultry producers as well as major restaurants, fast-food companies and chains across the country to stop serving meat from animals raised with the routine use of antibiotics used in human medicine.

“Unfortunately, the food industry in Pakistan is relatively unorganised and largely unregulated, making the challenge deeper than other countries,” Shabbir said. She said that fast-food companies and restaurants were in a position to positively use their buying power to make a difference to the supply chain.

“Apart from use of antibiotics in food-producing animals in Pakistan, illegal slaughterhouses, trade of dead animals and sale of unhygienic meat are other grave issues, which need to be tackled on an urgent basis,” Shabbir said.

Participants of the seminar urged the government to launch a public awareness programme to curb antibiotic use in livestock and poultry.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2016.