Use of antibiotics on food animals should be cut back to help stop the alarming increase in superbugs, the World Health Organization said."The misuse and irrational use of drugs are weakening the fight against diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria, that should have been contained decades ago," said Shin Young Soo, WHO regional director for the Western Pacific.
"At the same time, other age-old diseases are on the rise, with the possibility of no cure," he warned.
The regional meeting in Manila, which ends today, passed a six-point plan of action to fight drug resistance.
The director of health systems in the WHO Western Pacific office, Henk Bekedam, said companies give antibiotics to animals, especially those for export, to prevent them from getting sick.
Resistant bugs from these animals can spread to humans through contaminated food, direct contact with animals or by environmental spread such as through contaminated water.
"If you don't have a comprehensive approach you will have some gaps, you will still become vulnerable," Bekedam said.
The resistance of gonococcus - which causes the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea - to penicillin and quinolones is more than 50 percent in much of the Western Pacific.
About 120,000 individuals a year in the region are estimated to have multi- drug-resistance tuberculosis.
Early signs of resistance to a therapy for malaria treatment have been noted on the Cambodian-Thai border.
Bekedam said China, Cambod
ia and Laos are hot spots for the emergence of superbugs because doctors and health- care workers overprescribe medicines for economic gain.They often get a small portion of their salary from the government and a big portion of their earnings by prescribing drugs.
"If they prescribe more drugs they get more income so there is often an incentive in countries which are very much relying on out-of-pocket expenditure," Bekedam said.
"There we often see overuse of medication"
Tuberculosis is vulnerable because compliance is difficult when it takes six to eight months of treatment.
He said drug resistance for malaria might have arisen from counterfeit medicines where "people intentionally sell something which is not good ... not the right medication."
The Standard report yesterday headlined "Alert on deadly polio outbreak" should have said the toll from the polio outbreak in Xinjiang is expected to rise beyond the 17 known cases. Only one person has died.
