World Antibiotics Awareness Week (WAAW) is a week in November of every year dedicated to creating awareness about antibiotics. It’s misuse and resistance. This year’s WAAW is from Monday 18th to Saturday 24th November.
Antibiotic is a chemical substance that kills or inhibits the growth of bacteria. They are used as a drug to treat and cure diseases caused by bacteria. They are usually derived from a microorganism such as mold and bacterium.
Examples of antibiotic drugs we use include penicillin, ampliclox, gentamycin, ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, metronidazole, and amoxicillin.
Things You Should Not Do
There are things we do that seem normal to us but have been affecting our global health in general. Or are you surprised how your action can affect the whole world?
Have you been doing any of the things listed below? If you have, then you are one of the causes of antibiotics resistance.
Wrong ways we use antibiotics are listed below:
Taking medicines without a prescription by a doctor.
When you have a cold, fever, or cough, you are not meant to go to any pharmacy and buy a drug to use yourself instead visit a doctor to prescribe a medication for you.
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Not Completing any dose of antibiotics given or prescribed to you.
When you are given a drug to use for five days, and after three days, you felt like you are now okay and need to stop using the medicine, you are doing the wrong thing. The dosage of antibiotics given to you should be completed even when you “feel” better. When it comes to bacteria, feeling better doesn’t mean you are better.
Sharing antibiotics given to you with a friend or family member.
This is still further iterating the point made earlier. Antibiotics are not meant to be shared with family members or friends.
Using Antibiotics as a contraceptive.
There’s usually a misconception that ampliclox is a contraceptive and if used after sex will prevent pregnancy. Ampliclox is not an abortion pill or a contraceptive and should not be used as such.
Using antibiotics for infections like cold and flu
Not all health infections can be treated with antibiotics. Diseases like cold and flu are viral infections and can’t be treated with antibiotics.
Misuse of antibiotics by doing all these things above is a big threat to global health and the leading cause of antibiotics resistance which health practitioner has been fighting against. And what is antibiotic resistance?
Antibiotics resistance occurs when drugs no longer work in our body, i.e., microorganisms have grown resistance to it, and therefore, they can’t be affected by the drug again.
I believe you can remember a time when we use chloroquine to treat malaria, and it works perfectly. Now chloroquine doesn’t work against malaria infection anymore, and we have to be using other drugs like lonart and the likes. That’s antibiotics resistance.
The illustration below will further explain what antibiotics resistance is:
If we don’t stop the bad habit of misusing antibiotics, very soon, all the available medicines will become resistant to bacteria, and we won’t have any antibiotics to use again.
Therefore, use it right!
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