Call for medication policy review as antibiotics fail
What you need to know:
- Researchers who carried out the studies told The Citizen yesterday that the common antibiotics being prescribed routinely in Tanzania were now losing effectiveness due to lack of clear policies guiding medical practitioners on how and when to give medications.
Dar es Salaam. Two key studies carried out in Tanzania and published recently in two international journals have exposed antibiotic resistance that threatens treatment effectiveness, and experts are now pushing for a review of prescription practices.
Researchers who carried out the studies told The Citizen yesterday that the common antibiotics being prescribed routinely in Tanzania were now losing effectiveness due to lack of clear policies guiding medical practitioners on how and when to give medications.
Matters were also complicated by the fact that in most health facilities, there is lack of key equipment with which to facilitate proper diagnosis of bacterial diseases.
In the latest study carried out in Mwanza Region, it was revealed that expectant mothers living with HIV were now more prone to Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) due to lack of routine screening for the bacterial infections and the growing threat of resistant bugs.
The study was undertaken by researchers from the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences (Cuhas) in collaboration with counterparts from the University of Calgary in Canada and published last week in the International Journal of Microbiology.
The study, titled: “Urinary Tract Infections among HIV-Positive Pregnant Women in Mwanza City, Tanzania, Are High and Predicted by Low CD4+ Count”. A total of 234 women at five health facilities in the region were involved and according to the findings, 21 per cent of them were diagnosed with UTI, yet none of them displayed any symptoms of the disease.
The researchers say such women with UTIs may be “overlooked” if practitioners rely on symptoms instead of taking them through “culture and sensitivity” test.
One of the researchers, Dr Mariam Mirambo, said the bacterium notorious for causing UTI, Escherichia Coli, has become almost totally resistant to Septrine, an antibiotic prescribed to HIV-positive pregnant women with bacterial infections.
“This study shows that Septrine no longer protects (the HIV-positive pregnant women) against UTI because the resistance pattern has now reached 100 per cent,’’ said Dr Mirambo.
According to the head of Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Cuhas, Dr Jeremiah Seni, it is high time routine screening procedures were introduced at health facilities where they are missing in order to protect patients from partial treatment of bacterial diseases.
He noted that certain antibiotics such as Ampicillin and Septrine were found to be ineffective (from 72-100 per cent), compared to other antibiotics such as Nitrofurantoin, Gentamicin and Ceftriaxone (whose ineffectiveness patterns ranged from 0 – 33 per cent)
The team of researchers conducted the study from March to May in 2016 at Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT) clinics at Bugando Medical Centre (BMC), Sekou Toure Regional Hospital, Nyamagana District Hospital, and Makongoro and Buzuruga Health Centres, all located in Mwanza City.
In another study published in the BioMedical Central Journal, researchers from the same university (Cuhas), said there was a need to review the way antibiotics were being prescribed among malnourished children aged below five in order to prevent deaths and infections that resulted from improper prescription.
