RBC together with RPA (Rwanda Pediatric Association) warns Rwandans to be careful about the use of antibiotics, this message was given during the world antimicrobial resistance awareness week held in Kigali Antibiotics which is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria are medicine mostly used in Rwanda and around the world whilst according to doctors the misuse of it may lead to its resistance to illness.
Isabelle Mukagatare, the head of Biomedical Service Department in RBC, spoke about how antimicrobial resistance happen and what Rwanda is doing to handle the problem linked to the consummation of antibiotics.
“There are some medicines which are mostly known for healing infections, which are in 3 stages, when a person reaches to using medicine of stage 3, it is because other stages are incapable of healing the illness, it has been found that due the misuse of antibiotics, the bacteria become resistant to that stage 1 and 2 medicine and people end up using stage 3 medicine which are even expensive, so for Rwanda we have prepared a 5 years plan by examining the problems we have linked to antimicrobial resistance and what we can do about that problem, we give trainings to doctors, pharmacist and the consumers, we even capacitated the level of our laboratories so that they can be able to diagnose those diseases.” She stated.
Most people especially parents have the culture of self-medicating their kids, according to Dr Tuyisenge Lisine, a doctor at CHUK and representative of RPA (Rwanda Pediatric Association), people should avoid it and consult the doctors.
“It is true that kid catches more illnesses than old people for instance diarrhea and most commonly respiratory diseases, and many parents quickly give them antibiotics which are not necessary every time, some medicine becomes irrelevant and no longer heal the patient but instead they may end up very ill and even hospitalized.” Said Dr Tuyisenge
Tuyisenge gave an advice of consulting a doctor every time somebody gets sick and avoid self-medication especially misusing antibiotics. Self-medication has its effects, Mukantagara Angelique a doctor at Gahini Hospital, spoke about its effects.
“Because we receive patients who have the issue of antimicrobial resistance sometimes it may be due to self-medication, so when they get back, we examine them and get to find out why the medicine are not functioning, if a patient take medicine without following the prescription given by the doctor, the medicine may end up irrelevant to the illness, the patient is advised to take other medicine of highest level, and sometimes they may even risk to die.” She spoke.
RBC encourage all Rwandans to use correctly medicine especially by avoiding self-medication. According to the study done in 2022 by RBC, Kibirizi district Hospital, College of Medicine and health sciences and Single project Implementation in Gisagara district conduct in 3 health centers ,54% of patients received antibiotics which is more than WHO standard of less than 30%. WHO warns that if action is not taken antimicrobial resistance could cause 10 million deaths annually by 2050.
