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Roosterman No. 11; January, 2012
Antibiotics Compromise Chicken’ s Health
In the poultry industry, including in raising game fowl, antibiotics are misused and over prescribed. Not only that millions of hard earned pesos of ordinary chicken raisers have been wasted, the health of livestock and people have also been compromised.
Incorrect and indiscriminate recommendation of applying antibiotics led to development of new strains of harder to kill bacteria.
The following recent article published in the New York Times urges smarter and safer use of antibiotics.
Antibiotics compromise chicken’ s health By JANE E. BRODY
Antibiotics are important drugs, perhaps the most important. In a world beset with“ an unprecedented wave of new and old infections,” as one expert recently wrote, it is critically important that antibiotics work well when people need them.
But antibiotics are frequently misused— overprescribed or incorrectly taken by patients, and recklessly fed to farm animals. As a result, lifesaving antibacterial drugs lose effectiveness faster than new ones are developed to replace them.
Each year, 100,000 people in the United States die from hospital-acquired infections that are resistant to antibiotics, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
These concerns led Dr. Zelalem Temesgen, an infectious disease specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to create a 15-part“ Symposium on Antimicrobial Therapy,” published in February in The Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The series is intended in part to help practicing physicians know when and how antibiotics should be used— and, equally important, when they should not.
Improving how antibiotics are prescribed can do more than curb resistance. It can save lives and money by reducing adverse drug reactions and eliminating or shortening hospital stays, Dr. Temesgen said.
The first installment in the series, based on guidelines developed by the infectious diseases society and published with Dr. Temesgen’ s introduction, was devoted to helping doctors practice better medicine. It also can help patients better understand how and when antibiotics work best, and it can arm them with the right questions when an antibiotic prescription is being considered.
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