India told to make antibiotic resistance plan

The World Health Organisation on Tuesday asked its member countries including India to prepare a national action plan on antibiotic resistance within the next two years for an effective battle against one of the emerging threats to the public health.

The WHO has endorsed the global action plan to tackle antimicrobial resistance including antibiotic resistance, the most urgent form of drug resistance trend, primarily because of its ability to compromise the medical treatments of a large number of diseases.

The apex health body took the decision in Geneva during the ongoing World Health Assembly, chaired by the Indian health minister J P Nadda.

The WHO resolution spells out five objectives behind the global plan and suggests a broad set of strategies, which individual nations will have to tailor according to their domestic needs.

“India has a guideline since 2011. But the real problem is in its implementation as health is a state subject. The policies on antibiotic resistance can not be implemented unless the pharmacists are on board,” said Chand Wattal, head of the department of microbiology at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here.
“Staff crunch is the major problems the states face as skilled manpower is essential. The WHO resolution can provide a fresh push on the government's initiative to curb antibiotic resistance as key issues could be revisited,” Wattal, one of the members of the team that framed the Indian guideline, told Deccan Herald.

Antibiotic resistance develops when bacteria adapt and grow in the presence of antibiotics, a class of medicine meant to kill these bugs. The resistance develops due to abuse of antibiotics.

Since many antibiotics belong to the same class of medicines, resistance to one specific drug can lead to resistance to other similar drugs, complicating the treatment option for the physicians.
Since antibiotics are widely used in poultry and animal husbandry, the WHO plan suggests close coordination with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Organisation for Animal Health.

Health ministry sources pointed out that the government was not too keen on stringent implementation of the guidelines particularly the sale of prescription drugs in the medicine shops, because in the absence of doctors in the countryside, the antibiotics sold by the chemists without a prescription can not only treat a patient but can also save his/her life.

The Indian guideline also stressed on rational use of antibiotics, a surveillance programme to pick up the resistance cases and strict infection control in the hospitals.