Targeting Antibiotic Resistance

Awareness Campaign

The bacterial antibiotic resistance is currently one of the major health challenge, since it causes increased mortality, attributable to infections, increased length of hospital stay, and increased need for intensive care and invasive devices. It also leads to continuous guideline alterations and increased resource utilization and costs. Moreover, the access of pharmaceutic antibiotics without medical subscriptions in many Arab countries led to an over- and misuse of this medication and ultimately to an increasing antimicrobial resistance in the population. This is also reflected in the report by the World Economic Forum, where antimicrobial resistance is expected to cause 10 million deaths per year by 2050 if left without action.

In order to tackle the problem of antibiotic misuse and resistance, the AGYA working group Health & Society conducted a two-day awareness campaign from 28 – 29 March, 2022 in Tunis, Tunisia. In cooperation with the Pasteur Institute de Tunis (IPT) and the Children’s Hospital ‘Bechir Hamza’ in Tunis, the awareness campaign implemented a conference and a workshop, respectively.

During this campaign we have distributed approximately 300 allergen kits for children to distinguish between allergic bronchitis and infectious bronchitis in order to prevent the misuse of antibiotics during the allergy season. Only infectious bronchitis needs to be treaded with antibiotics. 

Dr. Olfa Messaoud, AGYA member
 

Conference at Institute Pasteur de Tunis

The hybrid conference took place at the amphitheatre of the Ibn Al Jazzar department, followed a multidisciplinary approach, and aimed to address different perspectives on the topic. It involved a transdisciplinary group of invited speakers and audience of pharmacists, physicians, veterinarians, agronomists, and regulatory health authorities.

In the light of increased antibiotic resistance the following key recommendations have been developed during the conference in order to face the situation and decrease the risk:

• Stop misuse, abuse or overuse antibiotics
• Try to avoid overprescriptions of antibiotics and consult your physician before using them
• Never share antibiotics with others
• Implement good infection prevention control on antibiotics
• It is important to have regulatory authorities on enforcing control of antibiotic usage

Awareness Campaign at Children’s Hospital ‘Bechir Hamza’

The campaign served as outreach activity in the beginning of the allergy season implementing interviews with physicians and patients, and distributing brochures to their parents to raise awareness for the problem of antibiotic resistance. During the campaign the AGYA members provided material in form of allergen kits that help to distinguish regular allergies of non-bacterial origin from those resulting from bacterial infections in order to prevent the misuse of antibiotics.

Watch the highlight video of the awareness campaign providing recommendations on how to prevent future misuse of antibiotics here.