Health, agric leaders sign up to prevent antibiotic abuse

Committee leaders for health and agriculture in the Senate have signed up to a pledge as “antibiotic guardians” to stop the “irresponsible and inappropriate” use of antibiotics that could lead to resistance.

Ibrahim Oloriegbe, chair of the Senate health committee, and Abdullahi Adamu, chair of the Senate committee of agriculture and productivity, signed up at the launch of the “Antibiotic Guardian” platform by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in Abuja on Thursday.

It comes amidst weeklong activities to raise awareness about the improper use of antibiotics and the potential for diseases previously treatable with antibiotics to develop resistance, making present cohort of antibiotics ineffective for treatment.

Oloriegbe committed to raising awareness among Nigerians on the dangers of using human and veterinary antibiotics indiscriminately, and promised to communicate in mass-messaging to educate nigerians.

“The media needs the public to know that antibiotics as good and useful as they are, they are dangerous,” he said.

“Except we develop programmes to educate the public on the dangers, we won’t win the war.”

The platform antibioticguardian.com/Nigeria is up, and individuals can sign up to pledges requiring them to be careful about using antibiotics to ensure diseases don’t develop resistance to existing lines of drugs meant to treat infectious diseases.

Director-general of NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, said the platform is to “help us raise awareness around this among our population, so that next time the doctor just gives you antibiotics because you have a fever, so people feel empowered to ask, ‘what’s this for? Have you done a test to know what I have?’”

“Our voice at NCDC, the voice of [ministry of] agriculture is not enough. We need more voices to help us amplify the message. Sometimes the solution to our problem is fairly simple, if we educate the public appropriately.”