Proper use of antibiotics

The World Health Day passed off the day before yesterday with a call for informed and rational use of antibiotics. This came under the theme of the day which was "Antimicrobial resistance and its global spread".
The call is extremely relevant for Bangladesh. Here, people get to use antibiotics indiscriminately even when afflicted by simple fever or pain. There is a widespread lack of knowledge of the consequences such casual application of antibacterial drugs leads to. Pharmacies, many of them unregistered, dispense antibiotics for any complaints that patients come up with. Sometimes physicians also may try the hard drug to get quick relief to patients suffering from common cough or fever.
It is feared that such uninformed use of antibiotics might have seriously scaled up resistance to drug. Even where a less potent antibiotic would have worked perfectly well on patients they would need to have higher potency drugs to cure themselves. This has also other ill-effects on the body's immune system.
To mitigate the riotous application of antibiotics a four-pronged strategy needs to be adopted. In the first place, the overarching imperative is to make it legally binding on pharmacies to sell antibiotics only on the basis of a prescription from a qualified doctor. Secondly, the Drug Administration will have to be adequately staffed and equipped to carry out monitoring operations in the market. This is a specialised job which cannot be done through ordinary law enforcers. Thirdly, pharmacies that remain unregistered would have to be formally enlisted with the health directorate within a specified timeframe. Last but not least, an awareness campaign ought to be launched through the media, both electronic and print, to sensitise people all over the country about the hazards of indiscriminate antibiotic uses. Patients should be warned against self-medication. Finally, doctors will have to ensure that patients not only use an appropriate antibiotic but also apply the same for the stipulated number of days.