The Union Health Ministry has asked all doctors in medical colleges and medical associations to mandatorily mention the indication and reason/justification for prescribing antibiotics.
The Director General of Health Services, Dr Atul Goel, also appealed to all pharmacists to strictly implement the schedule H and H1 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, and stop the over-the-counter sale of antibiotics. They have been asked to sell antibiotics based only on prescriptions.
He wrote to all doctors of medical colleges and medical associations in the country urging them to adhere to the guidelines.
To monitor the indiscriminate use of certain antibiotics and prevent the emerging threat of resistance to antimicrobial agents, the Union government, in 2014, issued the Schedule H and H1 notification.
The study also revealed that equally disquieting was the fact that 94 percent of patients received antibiotics before a precise medical diagnosis that would pinpoint the root cause of their infection.
“Misuse and overuse of antimicrobials are the main drivers in the development of drug-resistant pathogens,” Goel said in the letter.
“With a few new antibiotics in the research and development pipeline, prudent antibiotic use is the only option to delay the development of resistance,” he stated.
Antimicrobial resistance has been one of the top global public health threats facing humanity, he added, pointing out that it was estimated that bacterial AMR was directly responsible for 1.27 million global deaths in 2019 and 4.95 million deaths were related to drug-resistant infections.
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