Dr Mohamed al-Thani, Dr al-Khal and others at the press conference
By Noimot Olayiwola
The use of antimicrobial medicine should be controlled in order to prevent infections caused by resistant micro-organisms, which often fail to respond to the standard treatment and result in prolonged illness and greater risk of death, senior infection control doctor yesterday advised.
Drug resistance is becoming more severe and many infections are no longer easily cured, leading to prolonged and expensive treatment and greater risk of death, the World Health Organisation warns on World Health Day.
The day is observed every April 7 to mark the founding of the WHO and this year it was held under the theme ‘Combat Drug Resistance: No Action Today, No Cure Tomorrow’.
“Drug resistance is a natural biological phenomenon, through which microorganisms acquire resistance to the drugs meant to kill them,” Hamad Medical Corporation’s Infection Control consultant and Medical Education Department chairman Dr Abdul-latif al-Khal said.
“With each new generation, the micro-organism carrying the resistant gene becomes ever more dominant until the drug is completely ineffective. Inappropriate use of infection-fighting drugs (underuse, overuse or misuse) causes resistance to emerge faster.”
The official, who was speaking yesterday on the occasion of the World Health Day, disclosed that Qatar is witnessing an increase in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) for a number of diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria parasite, urinary track infections and some cancer bacteria.
“In Qatar, we are seeing increasing rates of resistance among bacteria, both coming from community or within the hospital system and most of these bacteria acquired inside the hospital usually complicate the course of treatment,” Dr al-Khal said.
He mentioned that there have been situations where there were no antibiotics for serious bacterial infections in the past adding that drugs that were orally effective in the past were no longer effective.
“We are using stronger antibiotics and even there were chances that those stronger antibiotics giving by mouth could develop some 20% resistance. There is also resistance among salmonella and shigella bacteria, which cause gastroenteritis as well as among pneumococcus that cause lung infections,” he said.
Dr al-Khal said that estimated 35% of all pneumococcus in Qatar were resistant to penicillin, which is the first drug of choice.
“There is increasing incidence of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)that causes severe infections usually skin-borne and blood infections. About 30% of all staphylococcus is MRSA and this can cause significant morbidity and increased chance of mortality in hospitalised patients,” he said.
“Now, this is happening frequently, we see it now and then. Patients in such situations may end up dying because there was no effective antibiotic, he said while mentioning that multi-drug resistance TB worldwide accounts for 5% of cases, which translates every year into 440,000 cases and 150,000 deaths.
“There is increasing resistance among malaria parasite, among fungal organisms that cause hospital-acquired infections in cancer patients. This affects the global health and will affect the Millennium Development goals if nothing was done about it,” he cautioned.
However, Dr al-Khal mentioned that this year was the first that the WHO will be taking a global lead in addressing the phenomenon by launching a six-point strategy for all governments of the world to take an individual national action.
The Supreme Council of Health has organised a one-day symposium to mark the WHD and discuss antimicrobial resistance.
Other officials present at the press conference yesterday were Public Health department director Dr Mohamed al-Thani, the manager for Health Promotion and Communicable Diseases section Dr Mohamed al-Hajri and Primary Health Care Professional Leadership director Dr Khalid al-Badr.