Antibiotic resistance rises as diseases develop virulent trends

SEVERAL people afflicted with gonorrhoea, tuberculosis, malaria and HIV-related infections have been caught in sixes and sevens, with the diseases developing drug resistance that have left medical experts with headaches, NewsDay Weekender can reveal.

Medical practitioners are struggling with how to devise new ways of treating drug-resistant medical conditions. Specialist doctors have been struggling with how to devise new ways of treating the drug-resistant medical conditions.

Such drug resistance is often referred to as antimicrobial resistance and has been observed mainly during medical procedures. Experts say antimicrobial resistance occurs when micro-organisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites often change in ways that render the medications used to cure them ineffective.

Antibiotic resistance rises as diseases develop virulent trends

Stanley Midzi of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said gonorrhoea was recently added to the list of diseases that had become global threats.
“Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are back to haunt us once again. When your patients get infected, you have to juggle around medicines to prescribe to a patient suffering from the disease,” he said.

“Some of the strains can only be tackled by a combination of (medicines such as) tetracycline, aminoglycosides, flour quinolones, macrolides and cephalosporin.”

Midzi said there was no longer a single cure that could be used to treat a particular disease as no new molecules for the disease had been made in the past 10 years.

He said experts ignored the area since the introduction of condoms, with the general perception that the nation was moving towards an STI-free era.

Midzi said nearly 700 000 people around the world die each year because of drug resistance, adding that if unchecked, the figure could rise to one million deaths annually with medical costs rising by over $100 trillion, as more expensive drugs would be used.

Health and Child Care deputy minister Aldrin Musiiwa said the issue of anti-microbial resistant drugs needed to be addressed urgently.

“We have noted emerging cases of multiple drug resistance among TB and malaria patients. There has also been resistance to first or second line medicines for HIV, forcing us to change to more expensive medications,” said Musiiwa.

He said if urgent action was not taken to address the problem, more people could die from drug resistance rather than from the actual diseases.

“Anti-microbial resistance is like a time bomb. It’s soon going to be causing more deaths than the HIV pandemic and TB infections combined in sub-Saharan Africa if left unattended. The situation needs to be corrected now, not tomorrow,” he said.

He said anti-microbial drug resistance applied to all infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites.

“In other words, a patient is treated with the correct medicine, but the microbes will not respond to the agent such that signs and symptoms of the illness may not improve and this may lead to complications and death while on treatment,” he said.

He added that the Health ministry had commissioned a national anti-microbial resistance core team to guide the country in the one-health approach to anti-microbial resistance.

The Ministry of Health has since joined forces with Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe, African Treatment Access Movement and the Veterinary Public Health in an effort to develop an antimicrobial resistance national action plan.

Musiiwa said antimicrobial agents had saved millions of lives and improved the outcomes for countless patients since these medicines were introduced in the 1930s.

“The introduction of these antimicrobial agents can be dated back to the 1930s and has saved the lives of many people,” he said.

Project co-ordinator Pamela Woods said the project would cover both humans and livestock in Zimbabwe.

“This is for both human beings and animals as both are being affected by the microbial bugs and the bugs spread from human beings to animals,” she said.

“These bugs might affect one if they fail use medication correctly or fail to finish the course prescribed by medical practitioners,” she said.

Ministry of Health and Child Care deputy director of pharmacy services Newman Madzikwa said the aim of the project was to combat the generation of microbial resistance.

“What we trying to do here is fight the generation of microbial resistance, which is why we joined hands with the Veterinary Service,” he said.

The Health ministry, in partnership with the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, requires at least $200 000 to develop a National Action Plan against the usage of antibiotics in livestock.

The Ministry’s director of epidemiology and disease control, Portia Manangazira, said antibiotic resistance was rising to dangerously high levels and without urgent action, the world was heading towards a post-antibiotic era in which important medicines would stop working and common infections and minor injuries would start killing people again.

“For development of the National Action Plan, we have got a budget of $200 020 which is required urgently. We also need to do environmental assessments,” said Manangazira.

“The campaign against what has been considered excessive clinical use has been generally evenly directed at human and animal medicine, but there has been a concerted attack on the agricultural use of antibiotics, based on the assumption that all such usage is imprudent since it might act as an important source of resistance in bacteria affecting humans.”

Mananganzira said the growing antibiotic resistance was driven by overuse of antibiotics, adding that around half of the antibiotics produced globally were used in agriculture primarily to promote faster growth.

She said if measures were not taken urgently to reduce global consumption of antibiotics, simple infections would kill people.

“Consumers have an important role to play in persuading food companies to make the changes that are needed to stop this global public health threat and protect our medicines for the future,” Mananganzira said.