Authorities preparing national plan to study antibiotic resistance

AMMAN — Health Minister Mahmoud Sheyyab on Thursday stressed the importance of drawing up a national plan to study germs resistant to antibiotics and prepare policies to control overdependence on antibiotics, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

During a meeting attended by World Health Organisation and Health Ministry experts, Sheyyab called for plans to implement the national programme in the coming months at locations in Jordan’s three regions. 

The locations are King Abdullah I University Hospital in the north, Al Bashir and University of Jordan hospitals in the central region, and Karak Hospital in the south, the minister said, adding that all the concerned health authorities in the Kingdom will be involved. 

The national programme to inspect germs resistant to antibiotics will be geared towards raising the awareness of health cadres at public and private sector hospitals by providing them with data on the kind of existing germs and their level of resistance to antibiotics to be able to prescribe the most proper treatment for patients, Sheyyab said. 

Mohammad Tarawneh, primary health care director at the ministry, said the ministry’s national committee to combat germs resistant to antibiotics will supervise the national programme with the help of experts and specialists from various concerned sectors and foreign parties. 

He added that the committee will draw up the policies and roadmap to supervise implementing the programme. 

US health officials in May 2016 reported the first case in the country of a patient with an infection resistant to a last-resort antibiotic, and expressed grave concern that the superbug could pose serious danger for routine infections if it spreads, according to Reuters.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the bacteria was resistant to colistin, an antibiotic that is reserved for use against “nightmare bacteria”.

The infection was reported in a study appearing in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology, Reuters reported. 

The publication said the superbug itself had first been infected with a tiny piece of DNA called a plasmid, which passed along a gene called mcr-1 that confers resistance to colistin.

“[This] heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria,” said the study, which was conducted by the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre, according to Reuters. 

The case was found when a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman who had not travelled within the prior five months visited a clinic on April 26 with symptoms of a urinary tract infection, Reuters cited the study as saying. 

In Jordan, health professionals have advised the public against buying non-prescribed antibiotics from pharmacies during the prevalence of viral infections such as influenza and the common cold in winter. 

In remarks to The Jordan Times last year, consultant physician Abdulrahman Anani noted that the consumption of antibiotics in Jordan is three times as much as in the UK, “although the weather is colder there and the population is bigger”.

Anani said at the time that the use of antibiotics without a prescription will enable microbes to develop higher resistance against any medicine.

“Jordan was listed by the World Health Organisation [WHO] as one of the countries with the most misuse of antibiotic drugs,” he said.

WHO’s 2014 report on global surveillance of antimicrobial resistance revealed that antibiotic resistance “is no longer a prediction for the future; it is happening right now, across the world, and is putting at risk the ability to treat common infections in the community and hospitals”, according to the organisation’s website.

“Without urgent, coordinated action, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries, which have been treatable for decades, can once again kill,” WHO warned.

According to a 2014 study published in the Bulletin of Environment, Pharmacology and Life Science, 67.1 per cent of 1,141 surveyed Jordanian adults believe they can treat common infections due to changes in the weather with antibiotics, while 28.1 per cent said they use the drugs as painkillers.

The study said 49 per cent of respondents use leftover antibiotics without consulting a doctor, while 51.8 per cent said they take antibiotics based on a relative’s advice.