Globally, the use of antibiotics has been growing at a fast pace posing a serious threat to human health. Experts across the world have been repeatedly saying antibiotics are being consumed and prescribed unnecessarily which may have serious consequences in the days ahead. If antibiotics are taken inappropriately, harmful bacteria living inside our body can become resistant to the antibiotics, which means the medicines may not work when really needed. Unfortunately, a large number of people lack awareness of the risks of unwarranted use of antibiotics. Worse, health professionals like pharmacists and physicians who are supposed to guide ordinary people in this regard fail to accomplish their duty effectively.

In most cases of diarrhoea, fever, common cold, and sore throat, there is no need to take antibiotics and the ailment gets cured after a few days. Patients, however, get impatient and visit the nearest pharmacy seeking medicine that will cure the sickness promptly rather than going to a doctor for consultation and the test, if necessary. And the pharmacist almost always provides them with antibiotics though they don’t have a doctor’s prescription. This is because common people lack awareness that they shouldn’t consume antibiotics without doctor’s prescription lest the medicines may harm them. Even the physicians tend to prescribe antibiotics in the first visit of the patient, before ascertaining the cause of the sickness by means of pathological test. In general they prescribe antibiotics for cases of diarrhoea, fever, sore throat and common cold. But about 75 per cent of such cases are viral rather than bacterial and the patients don’t need to take antibiotics. According to a news report in this daily, 50 per cent of antibiotics prescription may be unnecessary.

It’s the duty of the doctors to encourage the patients to follow suggestive prescriptions and recommend them humidifiers and plenty of fluid along with over-the-counter medicines. Doctors should also offer guidance on when the patients should revisit them if they aren’t getting better. Children are particularly at high risk as they are more vulnerable to minor ailments for which they are given antibiotics. Such unnecessary exposure to antibiotics may have various side effects or the bacteria in their body may develop resistance to antibiotics and the medicines may not work in their body in the later years.

The Drug Act 1978 has provisions to prevent the abuse of medicines and allied pharmaceutical products. It specifically states that antibiotics can be sold only on a doctor’s prescription. But nobody seems to pay heed to this provision and antibiotics have been sold as easily as over-the-counter drugs. So the government needs to make sure that the pharmacists abide by the legal provisions or face action thereof. Doctors and hospitals should be asked to follow guidelines on medication prescription procedures which specify how to treat a particular disease and what sort of medicines can be used under what conditions; anyone found violating this protocol should be made accountable. Meanwhile, common people ought to be encouraged to change their lifestyle and diet so as to keep diseases at bay, thereby avoiding the possible use of antibiotics.