Panels To Screen Antibiotic Use At Govt Hospitals, Health News, ET HealthWorld
Antimicrobial drugs include antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals and antiparasitics that are used for treatment of infections. The move by the state comes in the backdrop of the health department’s finding in which 60% samples collected from patients at government hospitals were found to be resistant to common spectrum of antimicrobial drugs.
“Random use of these drugs leads to AMR which is becoming a big challenge in management of patients with infectious diseases. We need a strong monitoring on its rational use. , We want hospitals to have their own respective committees for proper implementation of norms,” said a senior health official.
Key tasks of these hospital-based teams are to streamline rational use of antimicrobials — use based on culture and sensitivity report as much as possible. The teams will also be asked to implement proper infection control measures.
The health department is deploying a software that captures data on culture of samples like blood, urine and respiratory to analyze the results for detection of antibiotic resistance and pathogen. Over 3,000 samples have been cultured so far where about 60% have been found resistant to common spectrum of antibiotics.
The HICCs have also been told to strictly implement infection control practices not only in patient control areas but also in other supportive areas. Experts said around 3% of all hospitalized patients tend to develop HAI whereas the vulnerability increases by four to five times among patients admitted in intensive care units. Common HAIs include central line associated blood stream infections, pneumonia, surgical site infections and UTIs.
“A patient getting treated at ICU is found resistant to various antibiotics. This means longer stay in the ICU which increases risk of HAI,” said a critical care expert.
“There also has to be a strong policies of penalizing medicine stops selling antibiotics over the counter,” said a health department doctor.
