DURU za matibabu zinasema kwamba kila mtu mmoja anayekufa miongoni mwawatu watano wanaokufa, anakufa kutokana na kuambukizwa bacteria, ...
DURU za
matibabu zinasema kwamba kila mtu mmoja anayekufa miongoni mwawatu watano
wanaokufa, anakufa kutokana na kuambukizwa bacteria, lakini ipo hofu ya vifo
kuwa vingi zaidi kutokana na kuzidi kuongezeka kwqa usugu wa dawa
zinazokabiliana na bakeria( antibiotic drugs )
Taarifa
hiyo ni ya shirika la afya duniani
(WHO).
"The
world is on the brink of losing these miracle cures," WHO announced in
2011. It sounded like the farewell to a generation of familiar, dependable
antibiotics after more than half a century of service.
In some
countries that brink has already been crossed, said Laura Piddock, director of
the UK-based initiative, Antibiotic Action, and founder of the Antimicrobial
Agents Research Group at the UK’s Birmingham University.
For too long
people have taken for granted that there will be antibiotics to kill the
bacteria, but the bacteria have been mutating to develop defences against those
very same antibiotics.
Streptococcus
pneumoniae is a major cause of pneumonia, among many other serious infections.
Escherichia coli, or E. coli, is a leading cause of diarrhoeal diseases.
Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is responsible for many ailments, from minor
skin infections to pneumonia, meningitis, toxic shock syndrome and sepsis.
“Whereas resistance
has been addressed for the past four decades by experts in the industrialized
world, studies describing the problem and the public health situation in the
developing world have lagged behind,” noted a recent book by the Alliance for
the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, at the US-based Tufts University.
From HIV to
malaria, the authors chronicle the double burden of fending off new mutations
as well as the older versions of infections.
As drugs
take longer to cure illnesses or are no longer effective, even minor infections
can become deadly, wrote a representative from the global pharmaceutical
company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Causes
Poor hygiene
speeds up the spread of antibiotic resistance. Taking antibiotic drugs
excessively, inappropriately or in the wrong dosage gives bacteria a chance to
alter their DNA and adapt to evade the effective ingredients in drugs.
In
Indonesia, a local study found that antibiotics are prescribed for nearly 80
percent of childhood respiratory and stomach illnesses - even for ones caused
by viruses, which cannot be treated by antibiotics.
With
increasing resistance to antibiotics, the need to find replacements is becoming
more urgent. “I think governments, industry and scientists do appreciate the
problem,” said Brad Spellberg of the US-based Infectious Diseases Society of
America Antimicrobial Availability Task Force. “What most governments have thus
far lacked is the political will to act on the problem.”
Even with
political will, scientific progress is slow, partly because designing an
antibiotic that effectively treats a range of bacterial illnesses can be more
difficult than finding a vaccine that prevents infection by targeting one
specific disease.
As a result,
the research pipeline for antibiotics is “virtually dry” GSK noted. “There has
been a significant reduction in antibiotic research over the past 15-20 years.
Only two classes of antibiotics [oxazolidinones and cyclic lipopeptides] have
been developed and launched in the last 30 years.”
“The
low-hanging fruit has been plucked - the easy-to-discover antibiotics have been
discovered,” said Spellberg. “Each new generation of antibiotics becomes
progressively more difficult to discover and develop, taking longer, costing
more, and being [financially] more risky than prior generations [of
antibiotics].”
Low profits
Antibiotics
are usually used for days or weeks, unlike treatment that can last for months
or years as in the case of chronic illnesses such as cancer and diabetes. When
available, new antibiotics are used as little as possible, and only when
patients fail to respond to existing treatments. As a result, new antibiotics
offer lower returns on investment, GSK pointed out.
Regulatory
hurdles for testing and approval have also hindered progress. In the last
decade the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the drug regulatory agency in
the US - where most antibiotic trials take place - has changed its rules on
clinical trials. “The result has been confusion… Companies are not sure how to
do clinical trials to make FDA statisticians happy,” Spellberg told IRIN.
“There is a substantially higher risk now of failing to get antibiotics
approved by the FDA, even if phase III clinical trials are successfully
completed.”
Initiatives
Efforts
underway to boost antibiotic discoveries include the Generating Antibiotic
Initiatives Now (GAIN) Act in the US, expected to pass later in 2012, while the
European Union (EU) recently launched a public-private partnership between
public research organizations and pharmaceutical companies to encourage
appropriate antibiotic use, monitor bacterial resistance, and boost research.
The EU plan
is expected to cost US$280.6 million, nearly 50 percent of which is being
provided by the Brussels-based Innovative Medicines Initiative, with the
remainder coming from collaborators’ in-kind contributions of expertise and
drugs.
Pharmaceutical
companies can also spur action. GSK, for example, has urged more public-private
partnerships. “There needs to be a fundamentally different approach, with
companies, public institutions and academia working together and sharing
information to re-stimulate research.”
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