National Institute of Health, Islamabad in collaboration with national and international partners is celebrating Antimicrobials Resistance (AMR) week form 18-24 Nov 2020. The World Health Organization has promoted the World Antibiotic Awareness Week to be celebrated each year with aim to increase global awareness of antibiotic resistance and its devastating effects on living beings.
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when 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. As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat.
NIH has planned and is implemented a series of activities across the country to sensitize the issue of AMR and to promote the correct usage of antibiotics across all fields in order to prevent further instances of antibiotic resistance. The activities include AMR seminars, webinars of AMR Trends in Pakistan, video messages, AMR Poster competition to raise its awareness among children, Video production competition for university students, and article writing competition for all to enhance societal level awareness about current practices and ways to control misuse of antibiotics.
The Executive Director of NIH, Prof. Maj. Gen. Aamer Ikram said, “it is collective responsibility of all stakeholder to combat with AMR catastrophe”. He emphasized on benefits and safe use of Anti-biotics and how its misuse is a real threat for all forms of lives on the earth. Under one health concept, this increasing concern is serious as there is excessive and unnecessary use of antibiotics in human, animal and agriculture fields. In our country there is unnecessary use of antibiotics and over the counter sale of antibiotics is seen. He said, “We are currently going through a pandemic COVID19 and like COVID, the AMR is considered as Silent Pandemic”. It Is much needed to design strategies to overcome the injudicious and unnecessary use of antibiotics, he added.
Dr. Muhammad Salman, National Focal Person on AMR, said that there is need of coordination among all health stakeholders to work collectively on this issue. He said that XDR Typhoid in Hyderabad and Larkana in Sindh is not only provincial problem, but we consider it the threat for all the country. Government of Pakistan has developed national action plan to control AMR in all sectors of society and it is the time to take concrete measures to tackle AMR issue including XDR Typhoid outbreak with collective responsibility.