More than 60 percent of the National Health Insurance bill for medication is spent on purchasing antibiotics, Professor Kwame Ohene Buabeng, a Clinical Pharmacologist has said.

He explained that available data showed that six out of 10 outpatient prescriptions issued in health institutions were antibiotics.

'If, for instance, the NHIS spends GHC10 billion on medication, then it means six billion out of the 10 billion are spent on antibiotics. This is a huge cost burden, and the sad aspect is that many of these are overused,' he explained.

Prof. Buabeng said the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), a situation where bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death.

He said because of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective, and infections become difficult or impossible to treat.

Prof. Buabeng who was speaking at a virtual media roundtable meeting on Antimicrobial Stewardship programme , organised by Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company said more productive people die while others take much longer to recover from their conditions.

'It is not every patient who needs to take antibiotics because some have liver and kidney conditions, and taking them will be detrimental to their health,' the Professor of Pharmacy Practice at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) said.

He urged medical doctors to pay attention to sensitivity tests and only prescribe antibiotics that were efficient for patients to help reduce the financial burden on the scheme.

Dr. Yaw A. Amoako, a Senior Specialist Infectious Diseases Physician and Research Scientist at the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) called on regulators to ensure that regulations on access to antibiotics were enforced.

'It is common to find over-the-counter outlets and drug peddlers selling powerful antibiotics that are on watch and reserve lists. These are drugs that are supposed to be stored in a certain condition and should not be out there,' he said.

Dr Amoako advised the public not to resort to buying antibiotics to cure all health conditions, including discharges, flu, ulcers, and dysentery.

While describing AMR as a menace similar to illegal mining, he called for a coordinated, collaborative, and sustainable approach to deal with the challenge.

'If you feel you are experiencing a condition, visit the hospital and go through the necessary tests to identify the condition and get the right medication. For instance, not every fever is due to infection. A fever may be due to malaria, cancer, or other conditions and may not necessarily need antibiotics to cure it,' he said.

Dr. Kodjo Soroh, the Medical Director of West Africa Pfizer, said 'AMR is one of the biggest threats to global health today and can affect anyone, of any age, in any country'.

'If it continues to rise unchecked, minor infections could become life- threatening, serious infections could become impossible to treat, and many routine medical procedures could become too risky to perform.'

He said without action by governments, industry, and society, AMR was expected to cause 10 million deaths each year by 2050.

Overuse of antibiotics is creating stronger germs and that some bacteria are already 'resistant' to common antibiotics.

More and more common diseases, including respiratory tract infections, sexually transmitted infections and urinary tract infections, are untreatable; lifesaving medical procedures are becoming much riskier, and our food systems are increasingly precarious

Source: Ghana News Agency