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RESPONSIBLE ANTIBIOTICS USE IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY
RESPONSIBLE ANTIBIOTICS USE IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY
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By: Ibraheem Olasunkanmi Qoseem
Illness to man happens in different ways. It can be as a result of stress, hereditary, accident, radiation, or infectious organismsbacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses; while most of their “healness” does come from the consumption of medicines.
Medicine is a form of scientific intervention that is used to alleviate the burden of sickness.
It can be taken through mouth, injection, inhalation, and other forms provided that it offers the doses for the needed relief.
As essential as these medicines are to the body in direst need, they can as well be poison to it if indiscriminately used; that is why it is not in any way advisable to take medications without the expert’s prescription.
Although this uncouth practice has gained currency in our contemporary societies. Everyone feels comfortable patronizing over-thecounter drugs, prescribing for ourselves and people around us with little or no knowledge about their mechanism of action: it works for A, so it will for B.
Using medicaments without an expert’s prescription is a leading cause of antimicrobial resistance. Antibiotics Resistance is a situation whereby the drug(antibiotics) used to mitigate the effects of microorganisms are no longer effective due to previous exposure to suboptimal or other uncalibrated doses and regimens. Moreover, if the drug is taken in less than prescribed dosages, the
microorganisms is bound to tolerate, survive and eventually withstand even higher concentrations of the drug. In this case, the microorganism has been emboldened to resist the drug. This is often the mechanism of community drug resistance build-up.
This is the reason why most drugs are no longer effective against common illnesses. Have you noticed the recent poor efficacy of penicillin, methicillin, and vancomycin against most bacterial infections?
If antibiotics are completely ineffective, we are all gone! A simple infection will become complicated, there will be no protection for people with a debilitated immune system- AIDS patients, children, cancer patients, and surgery operations will no longer be successful due to the inability to carry out preventive treatment for the diseased.
According to Lancet, it was reported in 2019 that an estimated 1.27 million people died as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant. Apart from being the leading cause of death globally, it also put us at risk of long hospitalization, costly treatment, and poor health outcome. For these reasons, fighting against antibiotic resistance is a collective course we must all take part in.
There is no better time to fight it than now because it is killing us at a fast pace. Expert should prescribe drugs when necessary. Take drugs only with a prescription. Ensure you complete the given doses. Check keenly for expired drugs. PCN, NAFDAC, and other agencies should not at this time give up on this fight.
