Global Antibiotic Awareness Day was observed worldwide on November 18 to spread the message of appropriate use of antibiotics amongst the doctors and patient community to fight the problem of antibiotic resistance. One of the most pressing public health problems of today is the fact that some of the infectious diseases have become untreatable with the currently available drugs. Resistance is being experienced more in the case of some widely prescribed antibiotics as the doctors tend to prescribe that class of drugs as an easy option even for a minor infection. Almost 50 per cent of antibiotic prescriptions in developing world and in some developed countries are not actually needed for treating diseases. Antibiotics need to be prescribed by physicians in optimal doses and regimens in case of an infection and should be stopped when the disease is under control. It is important that the use of last line antibiotics should be restricted to serious infections and only when simpler therapeutic agents turn ineffective. This needs to be kept in mind by the physicians and patients as drug resistant infections are usually difficult to treat and can lead to an increase in medical costs and mortality rates.
Spreading of resistance to most of the widely used antibiotics is posing a major challenge to the health authorities of both developed and developing countries as no newer drugs for infectious diseases are in the pipeline of the global pharmaceutical industry. This is despite the encouragement by the governments of developed countries and World Health Organisation to find new molecules. The Health and Human Services Department of the US government last year announced an agreement under which it agreed to pay $40 million to GlaxoSmithKline, to help it develop drugs to combat antibiotic resistance and biological agents. Under this plan, the federal government of the US could give the drug company as much as $200 million over the next five years for developing new antibiotics. How soon such gestures of governments of developed countries turn into discovery of stronger remedies is something to be seen. What developing countries like India should do, in the meanwhile, is try to reduce the number of cases of antibiotic resistance by spreading awareness of the dangers of irresponsible use of antibiotics amongst doctors of government hospitals and primary health centres. There is also an urgent need to intensify research efforts of government laboratories and other public institutions to find new molecules to treat drug resistant ailments.