Doctors and pharmacists on Saturday expressed serious concern over antibiotics losing their efficacy due to physicians prescribing them unnecessarily influenced by aggressive marketing of pharmaceutical companies.
They said that the pharmaceutical companies also influence the quacks to prescribe and the medicine sellers to sell more antibiotics.
The picture gets alarming as millions of quacks across the country are also goaded by the companies to prescribe antibiotics to the unsuspecting patients putting them on harms way, they said.
They told a roundtable that the resultant anti microbial resistance was putting the nation on the path of serious health hazards. Doctors said antimicrobial resistance is the result of microbes changing in ways that reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of drugs to cure or prevent infections.
Pharmacology department of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and World Health Organisation hosted the discussion, 'Antimicrobial Use: Context, Magnitude and Responsibility.'
Several drugs lost their efficacy against bacterial infection in the country due to such irrational use of antibiotics posing a serious risk to people's heath in the country, the participants said.
University Grants Commission chairman and AK Azad Chowdhury, himself a leading pharmacist said that more often doctors unnecessarily prescribe antibiotics to their patients.
Chowdhury, who taught clinical pharmacy and pharmacology at Dhaka University for long, held 'aggressive marketing strategy' of pharmaceutical companies mainly responsible for such a wrong practice.
Syedur Rahman, associate professor of pharmacology at BSMMU and coordinator of antibacterial resistance awareness building programme, said irrational use of antibiotic leave a long term negative impact on human health.
He also blamed non enforcement of the law in Bangladesh for the unchecked irrational practice.
Rahman said that the issue cannot be addressed unless there was a combined effort by the government, the licensing authorities, prescribers and dispensers as well pharmaceutical industry to check it.
Former director of drug administration Abdul Ghani said the drug administration cannot monitor properly to check the wrong practice due to political pressure and influence of money.
He said that due to pressure from influential groups the drug administration cannot properly monitoring this sector.
He said this happens because the government is never serious about monitoring the drug market.
M Mosaddek Hossain, managing director of pharmaceutical company UniHealth blamed upazila health complexes for providing to the patients not the complete dose of antibiotics.
He said it contributes to the patients getting resistant to antibiotics at alarming rate across the country.
He said that the government should ensure distribution of full course of antibiotics by the upazila health complexes to check the disaster.
Health service director general Khandaker M Shefayetullah also said that an unholy competition drives the pharmaceutical companies to unnecessarily prescribe antibiotics.
He said that he does expect the pharmaceutical companies to get socially responsible when they do not hesitate to find out new ways of bribing the doctors.
He said that the companies even do not hesitate to sponsors foreign trips for the doctors, bear expenses of their children's wedding and so on.
BSMMU vice chancellor Pran Gopal Datta and pharmacology department chairman Misbahuddin were present.
Source: New Age
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