Ann Rose Okurut the Commissioner of Animal Health and Director of Animal Resources in the Ministry of Agriculture has cautioned all those in the agricultural sector to use antibiotics only when animals need them so as to avoid antimicrobial resistance that is slowly becoming a silent killer.
“When you necessarily use antibiotics in animal feeds, it causes resistance because it exposes animals to small quantities of antibiotics which changes their genetic system to fight antimicrobials, which later leads to destroying the inner organs” Okurut explained.
According to Okurut, this greatly affects human beings who later consume these animals because antimicrobial resistance moves into the human population which poses havoc on human health.
Okurut made these remarks at the One Health Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Dialogue held at Hotel Africana in Kampala on Monday.
This dialogue with different stakeholders is one of the events organized to commemorate this year’s World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week which started on 18th November.
Celebrated under the theme “Preventing Antimicrobial Resistance Together” and the slogan “Antimicrobial Resistance: A Silent Killer” Okurut noted that the gospel they are spreading to those in agriculture currently is to practice hygiene and biosafety on their farms because this is quite a simpler way of preventing animals from getting infections.
Antimicrobial resistance is the state in both humans and animals when germs like bacteria and fungi develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them.
In 2019, nearly 1.3 million deaths worldwide were attributed to AMR a number of deaths that were more than those caused by malaria, cancer, and T.B. combined.
Doctor Baker Mohammad Moki the commissioner for policy development and capacity building at the Office of the President said that having policies alone is not enough unless people are thoroughly sensitized about the dangers of this threat to life.
“It’s very important that we educate our people to understand the policies and laws that are in place, why these things are of importance to them because without that they can’t help” Moki highlighted.
In 2018 the government of Uganda developed and launched the AMR action plan anchored on 5 strategies that aimed at slowing the development and spread of resistance as well as ensuring the availability of treatment.
Medical experts revealed that the major drivers of AMR in Uganda include among others the use of antibiotics that are not prescribed by qualified healthcare workers, the use of a smaller than recommended dose of antibiotics, treating animals with antibiotics meant for humans, sharing antibiotics between family members and use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feeds.
Dr. Henry Kajumbula the chairperson National One-Health AMR sub-committee appealed to Ugandans not to misuse antibiotics and to also try as much as possible to live a healthy life such that they don’t get infections.
“If you boil drinking water, sleep under a treated mosquito net and practice proper hygiene through hand washing and sanitizing it will help you not to use antibiotics unnecessarily” Kajumbula added.
The health professional also encouraged citizens to seek medical advice before using any antibiotics and also appealed to healthcare workers to use antibiotics when they only have laboratory evidence because this helps in curbing infectious transmission between patients.
“If we don’t practice these proper precautions as health care workers, we are inoculating people with low immunity with these organisms hence getting infected” he articulated.
Currently, 90% of bacterial infections among patients in Uganda intensive care units and health care centers in the country are being attributed to AMR.
