A medical microbiologist, Professor Rasidi Bakare, said that gonorrhoea has become untreatable in Nigeria, necessitating the need for better control of antibiotics use in the country.
Professor Bakare spoke at the 2019 World Antibiotic Awareness Week symposium by the University College Hospital Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee. Its theme was: “The Future of Antibiotics Depends on Us.”
He said unlike before when only one antibiotic is used to treat gonorrhoea, doctors now resort to combining many drugs to treat it.
According to him, the increased resistant of the bug that causes gonorrhoea to antibiotics like penicillin had led to the frequent change in the guideline for its treatment.
He declared: “Eighty per cent of gonorrhoeal infections are now resistant to antibiotics. Presently, gonorrhoea has become untreatable; we are now combining drugs to treat ordinary gonorrhoea.
“We had kept on changing the guideline to treat gonorrhoea. Today, the resistance to the current antibiotic adopted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Nigeria to treat gonorrhoea is more than 60 per cent. But once there is a 5 per cent resistance to an antibiotic, such is supposed to be discarded.”
Professor Bakare stated that the era of untreatable infections is fast approaching because more and more antibiotics are no longer working due to their overuse.
He stated that antimicrobial resistance is just as important as climate change and international terrorism, adding, “by 2050, over 10 million people will die yearly from antimicrobial resistance.”
Professor Bakare expressed concern that the pharmaceutical industry has largely turned away from antibiotic research due to the low likelihood of getting a return on investment despite the increasing number of superbugs.
Head, UCH Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee, Professor Regina Oladokun said antibiotic resistance bugs were highest in the hospital’s intensive care unit and named metronidazole as the most prescribed antibiotic at the hospital.
She declared “People have died from those multidrug-resistant organisms when you give antibiotics and it did not work for them; that is why we need to protect the antibiotics.
“We need to prescribe rationally; we need to use antibiotics appropriately. A problem that does not need antibiotics, please do not prescribe and more importantly, ascertain the actual bug and best antibiotic for its treatment.”
Mrs Olayinka Adeyemi, Deputy Director, Pharmaceutical Services, UCH, Ibadan, said antibiotics overuse was more among the learned and people working in hospitals.
She said, pharmacists are important in optimising antimicrobial use, preventing its wastages, deter potent drug errors; generate data on antibiotics to prevent stockouts and compliance with antimicrobial intake.
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