This week is World Antibiotic Awareness Week!
Antibiotics are essential for treating infections in both animals and humans but they are losing their effectiveness at an increasing rate.
Antibiotic Resistance
Bacteria can adapt and find ways to survive the effects of antibiotics, they become resistant and no longer work. The more you use an antibiotic the more bacteria become resistant to it.
How does this effect me?
The Public Health Campaign Video and their web page details the risks associated with overuse of antibiotics, please do take a read.
Routine treatments such as setting bones, basic operations and even chemotherapy all rely on antibiotics working, these will become increasingly dangerous should the bacteria become resistant to antibiotics.
What can I do?
Ask your pharmacist to recommend medicines to help treat cold or flu symptoms or pain
Take antibiotics exactly as prescribed, never save them for later, never share them with others
Spread the word, tell your friends and family about antibiotic resistance
Read this leaflet to learn how to look after yourself and your family.
Now a few words from our Dr Ramadani about the use of antibiotics:
“It is so important that we use antibiotics wisely, and it is widely understood that antibiotics are frequently given for viral infections, against which they offer no benefit.
When you see your GP with symptoms of an infection, your GP will be trying to judge the probability that your infection is due to a bacteria or a virus, and therefore whether antibiotics will offer any benefit. We do this very carefully and we respect our responsibility in controlling antibiotic prescriptions. The more antibiotics we prescribe, the more chance we have of developing antibiotic resistance. And the more we have antibiotic resistance, the more chance people will die from infections that we cannot treat. And as GP’s we do often see evidence of antibiotic resistance in our daily work. In addition, we do see frequent side effects from antibiotic use, such as diarrhoea, vomiting, rashes and thrush.
But of course, antibiotics remains really important in treating those who suffer serious illness due to bacterial infections.
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