admin
Linda Mzapi
Excessive use or consumption of meat from animals that have been induced with antibiotics for growth can lead the body to resist the antibiotics, research has shown.
Director of Epidemiology and Disease Control in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Dr Portia Manangazira told The Sunday Mail last week that recent studies have proved that over-prescription of antibiotics results in antibiotic resistance.
She cited typhoid as one of the diseases which has became resistant to the antibiotic, ciprofloxacillin.
“If antibiotics are used for a prolonged period, as has happened with persisting typhoid since 2012, where we have used ciprofloxacillin to treat carriers of typhoid and patients, we have now noted resistance to the drug,” said Dr Manangazira.
“In other words you get the correct medicine, but the microbes have got so used to the agent that your symptoms and signs of the illness such as fever, lethargy, may not come down” she said.
“Researches have proved that if antibiotics are put into animal food as growth promoters or for preventing disease and usually in sub-therapeutic doses, when humans consume their meat, anti-microbial resistance (AMR) is the outcome,” she said.
Dr Manangazira said Government is crafting an antimicrobial resistance action plan to combat drug resistant diseases.
The action plan was crafted as a response to reports that at least 60 percent of people living with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa are becoming resistant to the key anti-retroviral drug, Tenofovir.
Tinaye Agere
Online Reporter