If Ukrainians are now dismissive of antibiotics and take them off-label, then in just 10 years transplantation may stop in Ukraine, pneumonia may become incurable, and infections that have already been forgotten may return. This was stated by Health Minister Viktor Lyashko during a telethon on Friday, UNN reports.
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"Antibiotics are not candy, antibiotics are not pills that can be taken prophylactically, antibiotics are used exclusively as prescribed by a doctor. If we treat antibiotics with disdain and disregard the recommendations of doctors now, then in just 10 years we may stop transplantation because we will not be able to treat complications later. We may have a situation where pneumonia becomes incurable," Lyashko said.
He also noted that infections that we have already forgotten about may return.
"Therefore, the use of antibiotics is only with a doctor's prescription, only in the doses prescribed by the doctor, and only for the duration prescribed by the doctor," the minister emphasized.
In general, Lyashko noted that the formation of resistance to antimicrobial drugs is a global problem, but in Ukraine it is also a top topic in the health care system and public health.
"This issue was further exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people treated the viral disease with antibiotics out of ignorance.
The second issue is that we are paying even more attention to this during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation because of the large number of polytraumas, wounds, open wounds, and the large number of people admitted to hospitals," said Lyashko.
According to him, evacuation routes have an impact, when one patient can go through 5-6 hospitals when he or she completes his or her treatment, and this leads to the fact that a person is exposed to a large number of flora. The issue of infection control in hospitals is not always a priority, because with massive rocket attacks or massive arrival of people from the battlefield, a large number of people are formed who need to save lives as a priority, and this leads to the emergence of more and more infections that are resistant to the antibiotics that are available today.
Lyashko also explained that resistance does not develop in humans, but in a microorganism that can live in the human body.
"Everything may be fine, but in a certain period of time, when a person's immunity drops, and it (the microorganism - ed. ) from conditionally pathogenic becomes pathogenic, and if we took antibiotics not in accordance with the doctor's prescription, in the wrong dose, for the wrong duration, it can develop a certain resistance to the antibiotic, it will cause a disease, but we, taking the right dose of antibiotics, can no longer affect it, and this leads to the fact that the disease progresses, and we have to look for different schemes of different antibiotics in order to be cured," Lyashko said.