Concern over antibiotics usage in China
A number of deaths caused by a pig-borne disease in southwest China have thrown the spotlight on the 'widespread and indiscriminate' use of antibiotics in Asia. Streptococcus suis, which has rarely spread to humans in the past and should have been relatively easy to control if treated early with antibiotics, has infected 214 people in the Sichuan province in recent weeks, 39 of which have died. It has been reported that many of the victims have died within twenty-four hours of exhibiting symptoms.
A number of deaths caused by a pig-borne disease in southwest China have thrown the spotlight on the 'widespread and indiscriminate' use of antibiotics in Asia. Streptococcus suis, which has rarely spread to humans in the past and should have been relatively easy to control if treated early with antibiotics, has infected 214 people in the Sichuan province in recent weeks, 39 of which have died. It has been reported that many of the victims have died within twenty-four hours of exhibiting symptoms.
The news comes amid reports of avian influenza in parts of China, Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, the H5N1 strain of which has killed more than 50 people across Asia and led to the culling of some 140 million birds.
Bacteria have a will to survive, and therefore react to frequent and improper use of antibiotics by becoming resistant. Doctors have been accused of 'readily dispensing antibiotics to patients who may just have colds or the flu, ' and there have been numerous calls for such practices to be stopped amid fears of a shrinking pool of effective antibiotics.
'Streptococcus suis is not a very resistant bacterium and can normally be killed by penicillin, but the government has suggested using much stronger antibiotics. Maybe the bacterium has mutated to a more resistant strain,' said Li Mingyuan, a microbiology professor at Sichuan University.
'Penicillin can be used in New Zealand and America to kill bacteria like Streptococcus pneumoniae (a major cause of pneumonia),' said Raymond Mak, a pharmacist at Queen Elizabeth Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, 'but in Hong Kong resistance is so bad that even if penicillin works for you, you will have use take higher doses or use other antibiotics.'
Margaret Ip, microbiology professor at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong, added: 'bacteria are just living things and want to live. If you put a lot of pressure on them using particular antibiotics, they will become resistant, they will mutate. They will use all means to get around it.'
William Chui, pharmacology honorary associate professor at the University of Hong Kong, warned: 'China doesn't have enough antibiotics to choose from because their shelf lives are getting shorter. Before, it took 20 years, but now a drug faces resistance in 10 or even five years. It can take 20 to 30 years to develop an antibiotic, so we have to conserve our pool and use them only when we need to.'