Stop overuse of antibiotics

Chennai: Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) occupies headlines yet again, after a 70-year-old US woman died recently following treatment for a thighbone fracture in New Delhi.

It is a case of anti-microbial resistance as doctors confirmed the presence of a super bug called New Delhi  Metallo-Beta-Lactamase (NDM). Following the incident, tension sparked among the state medical industry, as Chemists and Druggists Association has sent a circular requesting members to prevent overuse of antibiotics.

One familiar form of abuse of drugs, according to the members, is when the patient uses an old prescription and buys the same medicines from the drug stores, if same or similar symptoms occur, even much later.

“The drug store never bothers to verify if the prescription is a fresh one or an old one, being recycled. It is indeed easy to avail antibiotics like altromicin over the counter in Chennai, without a prescription,” said a medical expert seeking anonymity.

Checks made by Deccan Chronicle also support the allegation, as most of the reputed private pharmacies do not check the date of the prescription, while a few of them give medicines even without a prescription, though it takes little persuasion.

It is also observed that government hospitals do not generally prescribe high-end schedule-H drugs, unlike the private ones. Attributing the phenomenon to the irrational drug usage, Dr G.R. Ravindranath of Doctors’ Association for Social Equality said, “Patients avoid seeing a doctor to save on consultation fees. They may land in serious trouble by opting to take medicines that might not tackle their ailment.”

In such a situation, the infection causing bacteria might develop resistance to drugs including antibiotics and render the patients’ ailment, difficult to
treat.

Guna Thyagarajan, administrative secretary of Tamil Nadu Chemists and Druggists Association (TNCDA), Chennai Chapter said, “The patient maintains no history and the doctors do not hesitate to prescribe antibiotics for less intense ailments. In many cases, antibiotics were prescribed for viral infections, which are utterly futile.” Reasoning on AMR, he said, “Adaptability of bacteria is so easy, when a person had tried on higher end antibiotics. In such cases, lower end antibiotics won’t act.”

Yet another example of drug abuse is when the patient uses the left out medicines of previous prescriptions by assuming that the ailment can be tackled by those medicines, resulting in dangerous consequences. “A patient behaves like a doctor suggesting to his general physician if he could take a particular antibiotics which proved effective in a similar occasion,” added Guna Thyagarajan.