With the beginning of World Antibiotic Awareness Wee, the United Nations, through its Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), called for responsible use of antibiotics in humans and animals to reduce the emergence of antibiotic resistance.
“Antibiotic resistance is a global crisis that we cannot ignore,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding, “If we don’t tackle this threat with strong, coordinated action, antimicrobial resistance will take us back to a time when people feared common infections and risked their lives from minor surgery.”
Antibiotic resistance is rising to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world and threatening our ability to treat common infectious diseases. Infections affecting people “ including pneumonia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning and gonorrhoea “ and animals alike are becoming harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat as antibiotics become less effective.
“FAO advocates for the implementation of good practices in terrestrial and aquatic production and health systems, Kundhavi Kadiresan, the UN agency’s Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific, as she formally opened the Week’s celebrations in the region, said.
This year’s theme is to seek advice from a qualified healthcare professional before taking antibiotics, it was pointed out. For food and agriculture, this means that one of the best ways to tackle AMR is to diminish the need of antimicrobials at farm settings through the promotion of good practices in livestock production, aquaculture farming and crop production.

Source: APP