KOCHI: Even as modern medicine is said to be evidence-based, the practice in the use of antibiotics is said to be exactly the opposite. Doctors and patients are eager to use antibiotics for most fevers.
P.N.N. Pisharody, expert committee member of the district unit of the National Health Mission, said usually just about 10% of cases or less than that coming to a doctor’s clinic may require antibiotics. But it has been found that the prescriptions for such medicines and their intake without evidence of an existing disease, has become a culture. In fact, diagnostics can suggest whether antibiotics are required or not.
“The trend is responsible for both doctors and patients taking such stance,” said Dr. Pisharody. Apart from chronic and lifestyle diseases, most people visit hospitals or clinics for fever, cough, or diarrhoeal infections, he added. And mostly, such fevers are viral infections. “However, people are unwilling to wait and watch under a doctor’s observation. Doctors too are ready to oblige rather than spending time on making patients understand why antibiotics may not be required,” observed Dr. Pisharody. Patients have to be told that such drugs need to be preserved for infections.
Easy availability of antibiotics is perhaps another reason why they make into prescriptions. It is also behind the trend of their over-the-counter purchase. In a country with less regulations, antibiotics are available over-the-counter as against most western countries where not even paracetamol is available without a doctor’s prescription, said Dr. Pisharody. Irrational use of antibiotics causes more harm than good, he added.
Vaccines have been the mainstay of eradication of virulent forms of bacterial diseases, and it is up to the community to realise the wrong uses of antibiotics. A demystification of antibiotics is perhaps the need of the hour,” Dr. Pisharody said. However, the increasing use of such drugs for managing deadly diseases have made microbes mutate into more virulent forms. “The result is we have multi-drug resistant tuberculosis bacteria and many more resistant bacteria for pneumonia and other treatable diseases,”
