The Nation Newspaper

Tag: antibiotics

  • ‘Overuse of antibiotics in livestock endangers lives’

    THE overuse of antibiotics in livestock  is putting lives at risk, Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ilorin,Ilorin, Prof Abiodun Adeloye, has warned.

    He urged farmers to exercise restraint in giving antibiotics to cattle, poultry, hogs and other animals to boost their growth, citing concern that drugs overuse endanger human lives.

    Adeloye said antibiotics should be used only to protect  animals and not to help them grow or improve their digestion.

    He  warned that while the principle linking antibiotic resistance and non-therapeutic uses of antibiotics was widely accepted, antibiotics are still routinely added in massive quantities to animal feed, not to treat disease but to promote faster growth.

    He said cases  have shown that the use of antibiotics in livestock leads to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can be—and has been—transferred from animals to humans through direct contact, environmental exposure, consumption and handling of contaminated meat and poultry products.

    Adeloye  called on the government to work together with the private sector to regulate unnecessary use of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

    He said the government must move in to address the dangers involved with overusing antibiotics in livestock production.

    The don said routinely feeding healthy farm animals low doses of antibiotics to boost growth and prevent disease could promote hard-to-kill, antibiotic-resistant germs that could infect humans.

    He   proposed restricting the use of antibiotics in agriculture in order not to jeopardise human health.

    He  warned that the risk to human health from the use of antibiotics in animals could not be quantified, but that it must be regarded as a threat to the therapeutic value of anti-bacterials in both human and animal disease.

    According to him, the  lack of appropriate controls over agricultural uses of antibiotics continues to jeopardise the usefulness of antibiotics for treating human diseases.

    To address critics’ concerns, he urged the government to  step in and regulate the  uses of antibiotics.

    In recent years, public health experts say there has been  alarming increase in the number of bacteria that have grown resistant to antibiotics, leading to severe, untreatable illnesses in humans.

  • Concerns over use of antibiotics, pesticides in livestock, crops

    Concerns over use of antibiotics, pesticides in livestock, crops

    There are growing concerns over the use of antibiotics to promote livestock growth. Speaking with The Nation, a don, Dr Ademola Adeyemo of Department of General Administration, Agricultural and Rural Management Institute(ARMTI), Ilorin, said the concerns followed a build-up of antibiotic resistance in humans to some pathogens being passed on through residues of the antibiotics in meat, fish, eggs and dairy produce.

    Urging the government to take steps to control their use, Adeyemo said there was need to protect public health and promote the use of medically important antibiotics in food-producing animals.

    He urged farmers to tell consumers through their label,the antibiotics that used in rearing animals.

    There is also an outcry on the use of pesticides. Some countries have called for the stoppage of neonicotinoids because of reports linking their use to the decline in honey bees.

    A consultant to the World Bank, Prof Abel Ogunwale told The Nation that irresponsible use of pesticides is a threat to health and the environment.

    He called for safe use of the herbicides,saying pesticides wrongly used could cause soil erosion.

    He said their proper use would prevent soil degradation.

    A crop protection expert, Prof Daniel Gwary, urged farmers to use Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which encompasses using biological, cultural, physical, and chemical tools to manage pests.

    Gwary, of University of Maidugari, said pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides could control weed species, harmful insects and numerous plant diseases that afflict crops.

    Without these important crop protection and pest control technologies, he said food production would decline, many fruits and vegetables would be in short supply, and the price of food would rise.

    According to him, crop protection technologies allow producers to increase yields and improve efficiency of the food production processes.

    Though they have negative effects, Gwary said pesticides were vital to crop health.

    He said farmers should use them safely to maximise their benefit and limit risk.

  • Experts caution against excessive use of antibiotics

    The non-prescriptive or excessive use of antibiotics and not completing the prescribed dosage are harmful, health experts have said.

    The experts including a Consultant Clinical Microbiologist, Dr Rita Oladele, Senior Registrars, Dr Ochan Ernest and Dr Abdul-Wahab Ettu, of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), said Nigeria is gradually returning to the pre antibiotic era, when any infection means death.They noted that the development is not limited to Nigeria alone, but cuts across the world.

    They said not following the required duration for antibiotics, taking antibiotics not meant for an illness and the general abuse of drugs will lead to anti-microbial resistance. This means pathogenic micro organisms invading the body will no longer respond to first-time antibiotics thus ‘once you are diagnosed with an infection it may lead to death’.

    The doctors said there was no need to have a prescription for antibiotics in Nigeria since its availability is uncontrolled and can be bought by anybody.

    “Dangers lie in taking antibiotics not prescribed by the right person, because you are not sure if the prescription is the right antibiotic for your illness, and if the right dosage is prescribed,” the doctors said.

    All these factors push forward to anti microbial resistance, they said.

    Anti microbial resistance means the micro organisms in the body can survive despite the presence of the right concentration of anti microbial. Anti microbial are either synthetic or natural substance that prevent the growth of micro organisms. When these micro organisms become resistant to anti microbial, death eventually occurs, the doctors said.

    Dr Ettu said; “when you have an infection, example, a respiratory tract infection, characterised by cough, and you use an antibiotics for it with prescription from a medical doctor, the cough may stop after a day or two of use of the drug, but you are still required to complete your dosage. This will allow for complete cure of infection , and prevent antimicrobial resistance, as oppose to stoping the drug by the second day, and then the residual organisms mutate and acquire resistance to that antibiotic and many other antibiotics.”

    They said everybody has a part to play if anti microbial resistance will not come to reality in the world.

    For Nigeria, they said the National Agency for Food, Drugs and Administration Control (NAFDAC) needs to test the quality of drugs and ensure it contains the accurate milligram before it enters the market.

    Manufacturers should monitor the movement of drugs down to the final consumer.

    Pharmacists are to sell antibiotics with prescriptions and they must be qualified to sell it.

    Doctors should not prescribe antibiotics for un-diagnosed conditions.

    Government needs to enforce the law in this country on antibiotics distribution.

    Dr Ernest said there is the need for people to be more educated on the use of antibiotics of which the doctors are not left out.

    He added that farmers also need to be educated on the use of antibiotics on animal products, because micro organisms in animals are also prone to antimicrobial resistance and can be transmitted to humans.

    The medical experts said legislation should be enforced to control antibiotics, we should start practising antibiotic holiday, so we can streamline the use of antibiotics. We should agree on the antibiotics to be used while the rest go on holiday. This will make the organisms to have memory loss. With that memory loss, we can start using those antibiotics we have sent on holiday again.

    “In the next five to 10 years, we are going to have low sensitivity to antibiotics in a lot of organisms,” Ernest said.

    What antimicrobial resistance will lead to is that people may die of an infection which should have being treated, the doctors said.