This follows an alarming South African study which shows that doctors and nurses are prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily.
A century of medical progress is threatened by worldwide antimicrobial resistance. This is according to areleased by the United Nations Interagency Coordinating Group on Antimicrobial Resistance . It concluded that drug-resistant diseases could cause 10 million deaths each year by 2050.
“Misuse and overuse of existing antimicrobials in humans, animals and plants are accelerating the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance,” the IACG report states. It also points out that poor access to clean water and sanitation increases infections in humans and animals . Dr Duane Blaauw from the Centre for Health Policy at Wits and Dr Mylene Lagarde from the Department of Health Policy at the London School of Economics made use of “mystery patients”. These are trained field workers who were sent to 120 private doctors and 73 public facilities to “present” with symptoms of acute bronchitis, but all of them were young and healthy.
A second group of patients was also sent. They explicitly told the doctors and nurses that they did not want antibiotics unless they were really necessary, but more than half still received it. The patients told the doctors and nurses they had a cough, runny nose and sore throat, but they did not have fever, chest pain, shortness of breath or any other significant symptoms.
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