antibiotics

The Eastern Highlands Provincial Health Authority (EHPHA) is calling on the public not to buy antibiotics that are being sold on the streets without prescriptions. 

The EHPHA board management and police in the Eastern Highlands issued this call to crack down on the illegal sale of antibiotics on the streets.  

EHPHA Board Chairman, Chris Kopyoto said he is very concerned seeing strong medicines being sold to people on the streets and in public places.

This is the take home message disseminated by the Department of Health in the weeklong awareness against the misuse of antibiotics.

Experts say every year, at least 700,000 people around the world die from infections with superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics – and this is predicted to rise to 10 million by 2050.

Taking antibiotics when you do not need them speeds up antibiotic resistance.

They argue there is not enough evidence to back the idea that stopping pills early encourages antibiotic resistance.

Instead, they suggest, more studies need to be done to see if stopping once feeling better can help cut antibiotic use.

But GPs urge people not to change their behaviour in the face of one study.

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, leader of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said an improvement in symptoms did not necessarily mean the infection had been completely eradicated.

Macrolides, quinolones, tetracyclines, sulfonamides and metronidazole were related to higher rates of pregnancy loss, the researchers say. However, a greater chance of pregnancy loss was not seen with the most frequently used antibiotics, including penicillin.

"It is reassuring to see that first-line treatments and antibiotics that are the most used in the population (penicillin, cephalosporin) were not associated with an increased risk of miscarriage," Dr. Anick Bérard, lead researcher and a member of the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Université de Montréal, wrote in an email.