Don’t pop pills all the time
The World Health Organisation’s warning that we could face a post-antibiotics era in which common infections may no longer have a cure due to overuse of powerful drugs should be taken very seriously. Miracle cures like antibiotics for what are now thought of as common diseases came only a few decades ago. These are now in danger of becoming useless by the modern propensity to pop drugs for every little affliction, starting with the common cough.
India is certain to be affected if the increasing use of carbapenems, the latest class of antibiotic pills, is not checked. The tendency of doctors to prescribe strong antibiotics to give their patients a quick fix is inherently dangerous as large sections of the population are likely to become resistant to these drugs too if prescribed so thoughtlessly.
In a post-antibiotics era, a threat is also perceived in the attitude of pharmaceutical firms, who now favour hyper marketing and research in drugs for lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension: once a patient is diagnosed, s/he becomes a captive client for life.
Strict government controls on the sale of H1 drugs is unlikely to have the desired impact as there will always be druggists willing to bend the rules for higher sales. Doctors, therefore, need to be urgently sensitised on the overuse of antibiotics, as superbugs and drug resistance can become major threats. It is ultimately up to the medical community to regulate themselves in order to stave off the increasingly irrational use of drugs.
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