Act against antibiotic resistance

The World Health Organisation’s regional director for South-East Asia in a wake-up call has urged member states to act “urgently” against antibiotic resistance.

“The world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era which will be devastating in this age of emerging infectious diseases,” Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh said, “We must act urgently”. 

The regional director of 11 countries made the call at the launch of a four-day regional meeting on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Jaipur on Monday.  Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste are the members of the WHO’s South-East Asia region (SEARO). 

Irrational use of antibiotic is rampant in this region.  The WHO has called upon the SEARO region, which is home to a quarter of world’s population, for accelerated efforts to address the burgeoning problem of antibiotic resistance.  It also urged to scale up national action plans to combat this daunting public health threat. 

“If we do not use antibiotics rationally, we will lose the power to fight common infections and minor injuries,” the regional director Dr Singh said. 

“We need to step up efforts to prevent antimicrobial resistance and change how we prescribe and use antibiotics,” she told the regional meeting.  The regional meeting focuses on developing and strengthening country-level plans, building national capacities and developing mechanism for generating information on the magnitude, trend, and the burden of the resistance in Member States. 

A WHO report earlier this year has termed antimicrobial resistance as a big problem globally and also in WHO’s SEARO Region.  The report, ‘Antimicrobial resistance: global report on surveillance’ noted that globally resistance is occurring across many different infectious agents. 

But it focused on antibiotic resistance in nine different bacteria responsible for common as well as serious diseases such as bloodstream infections (sepsis), diarrhoea, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and gonorrhoea.  The results caused high concern as it documented resistance to antibiotics, especially “last resort” antibiotics, in all regions of the world. 

WHO has prioritised antimicrobial resistance in view of the serious health, political and economic implication of drug resistance.  A regional strategy on prevention and containment of antimicrobial resistance was developed by WHO in 2010 which was endorsed by all Member States. 

The strategy focuses on improving inter sectoral collaboration, strengthening regulatory mechanism for assuring quality, standardized and rational use of antibiotics.  It also aims at boosting national capacity for laboratory-based surveillance of AMR, reducing burden of infectious diseases, enhancing hospital infection control practices and educating and empowering communities. 

The World Health Assembly has urged WHO to develop a global action plan against AMR by 2015.  The plan is being organised around five main areas of concern: awareness, information on the magnitude of the problem, economic impact, rational use of antimicrobials, and preventing infection.