In November, the Ministry of Health warned that one in five deaths caused by the resistance of bacteria and viruses to medicines occurs in children below the age of five years.
Resistance to antimicrobials has been rated as the leading cause of death globally, higher than HIV/AIDs or malaria.
Antimicrobials are medicines that destroy disease-causing microbes, also called pathogens, such as certain bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi.
The most familiar and important antimicrobials are antibiotics, which treat bacterial infections.
Antimicrobial resistance occurs when disease-causing organisms undergo adaptive changes that enable them to withstand antimicrobials.
“In recent times, overuse and misuse of antimicrobials have caused avoidable AMR emergence and spread,” the ministry warned.
“As a result, antimicrobial agents are rapidly losing their effectiveness in both developing and developed countries.”
Experts in the recent past have raised an alarm that treatment of diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDs is at risk from the threat of resistance to antibiotics unless urgent action is taken to reverse the trend.
Without effective antimicrobials, the success of modern medicine in treating infections, including during major surgery and cancer chemotherapy, would be at increased risk.
