KARACHI: Health experts said on Sunday that the third leading cause of death in Pakistan was the antimicrobial resistance due to which around 700,000 people lost their lives every year in the country.

Speaking at a programme held at a pharmaceutical plant in Korangi, they said that Pakistan was the third largest consumer of antibiotics in the world after China and India.

Antibiotic medicines worth Rs126 billion were consumed in 2023 alone in Pakistan, they added.

They urged people not to purchase and use antibiotics without the advice of qualified physicians.

“Antimicrobial resistance is now the third leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease and maternal and neonatal disorders in Pakistan. We now have infections caused by bacteria that are not responding to third and fourth generation antibiotics,” said Prof Shahzad Ali Khan, the vice chancellor of Health Services Academy (HSA) Islamabad, while briefing the media.

People urged not to take antibiotics without advice of qualified physician

The briefing was held in connection with the country’s first National Antimicrobial Stewar­dship Summit 2024, organised by Getz Pharma in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of National Health Services, HAS and National Institute of Health (NIH).

The summit was attended by over 1,400 healthcare professionals including health secretaries and directors general from federal and provincial governments, officials from NIH Islamabad, the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan, office-bearers of 13 medical societies, healthcare regulatory authority officials, senior physicians, policymakers and students.

Prof Khan maintained that antibiotics were ‘wonder drugs’ that saved millions of lives during world wars and pandemics, but their irrational use or abuse had led to antimicrobial resistance, now a major global public health concern.

“Self-medication, unjustified prescription of antibiotics by quacks and physicians, taking antibiotics for a shorter duration, and the production of substandard antibiotics by some companies are some of the major causes of antimicrobial resistance,” he noted.

Pakistan Society of Internal Medicine president Prof Javed Akram, also the former Punjab health minister, described antimicrobial resistance as the third major challenge facing Pakistan after population growth and non-communicable diseases.

“People are now dying due to infections that are extremely hard to treat due to the resistance developed by germs against these medicines”, Prof Akram regretted.

“On one hand, Pakistan has

become the world capital of diabetes and other non-communicable diseases, and on the other, we have developed extremely drug-resistant typhoid, multidrug resistant tuberculosis, and various other infections that are extremely hard to treat with most of the available antibiotics. This is because we have been using antibiotics like candies,” he opined.

Urging people to consider antibiotics as poison, he said people should not consume antibiotics on their own, saying antibiotics have similar side effects as cancer treatment therapies.

NIH representative Dr Afreenish Amir said antimicrobial resistance had spread to almost all countries and regions, including Pakistan, owing to the ‘misuse and overuse’ of antibiotics.

“This contributes to the increasing burden of infections due to resistant bacteria while limiting treatment options for managing such infections,” she said.

Health experts also talked about misuse of antibiotics in the livestock sector and said this problem was responsible for 80 per cent cases of antimicrobial resistance in the sector.

They called for creating awareness among the masses regarding the irrational use of antibiotics in humans, livestock, and poultry sectors.

Renowned paediatrician and public health scientist Prof Zulfiqar Bhutta, in his keynote address, urged people to get their children vaccinated against typhoid, saying Pakistan was the only country in the world where the typhoid conjugate vaccine was being administered to children to prevent them from the drug-resistant bacterial disease.

Dr Wajiha Javed of Getz Pharma said substandard antibiotics were also responsible for antimicrobial resistance and announced that the pharmaceutical company was working with the government to develop a national action plan on the public health challenge.

On the occasion, memorandums of understanding and a declaration was also signed on antimicrobial stewardship.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2024