Cape Town - Resistance to antibiotics is a worldwide concern and the South African government will be running an awareness campaign regarding the danger of misusing antibiotics.
Tuesday was World Antibiotic Day and this week the World Health Organisation (WHO) released its Antibiotic Resistance: Multi-country Public Awareness survey.
It showed that resistance to antibiotics is growing throughout the world, making it more difficult to treat infectious diseases. It also threatens to set back advances in health and medicine of the past few years.
People in 12 countries, including South Africa, Russian, Mexico and Indonesia were part of the survey.
A total of 1 002 people in South Africa were interviewed and 65 percent said they had taken antibiotics in the past six months.
National Health Department spokesperson Joe Maila said resistance to antibiotics had been talked about at previous meetings, and the department would step up its efforts to address the issue.
“We will do whatever campaign work needs to be done to make sure people know about antibiotic resistance. Curbing it starts with awareness. We have been aware of the issue for some time and it has been talked about before,” Maila said.
Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, said the rise of antibiotic resistance was a global health crisis and governments recognised it as one of the greatest challenges for public health today.
The findings showed that an average of 81 percent of people surveyed said they received their antibiotics prescribed or provided by a doctor or nurse, and nine percent said they obtained the drugs from a pharmacy or medical store.
A total of 25 percent of respondents thought it was okay to use antibiotics given by a friend or family, as long as they were used to treat the same illness.
The survey says 43 percent of people surveyed said it was acceptable to buy the same antibiotics, or request these from a doctor, if they were sick and antibiotics had helped them get better when they previously had the same symptoms.
“Both these actions can result in improper use of antibiotics and therefore contribute to the resistance problem,” the report read.
Marc Mendelson, professor of Infectious Diseases at Groote Schuur Hospital and UCT co-chair of the South African Antibiotic Stewardship Programme, said antibiotic resistance meant bacteria had become resistant to the antibiotics and humans had not become resistant.
“The importance of the distinction is that the focus to change this crisis is on reducing inappropriate use of antibiotics so that the number of resistant bacteria do not rise further,” Mendelson said.