Government health departments should exercise greater control over the use and dispensation of antibiotics to ensure fewer diseases become antibiotic-resistant, a leading US expert on infectious diseases warned yesterday.
Dr Frederick Murphy, former director at the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, said hospitals were now dangerous places for patients as many bugs had developed a resistance to antibiotics. He told a seminar organised by the UCC Science Society that a disease such as enterococcus had now built up such a resistance that no antibiotic had any effect on it.
"The reality about bugs is that they don't revert back to their original form. Just because you stop using penicillin for a couple of years doesn't mean a bug will revert back to its original form and lose its resistance to antibiotics," he said.
Dr Murphy also said that several insect transmitted diseases, such as dengue, were becoming more prevalent in tropical countries as health authorities were according less importance to mosquito control.
"Fifteen years ago there were few outbreaks of dengue in the Americas, but now we have them every other year. A few years ago we had an epidemic in Sao Paulo with one million cases, while we also had a big epidemic in Cuba some years back.
"These epidemics are in areas where the same mosquito was eradicated in the early 1900s. These outbreaks are due to failing mosquito control which is low on the list of health priorities," he said.
The ability of the mosquito, which transmits malaria, to develop a resistance to chloroquine is prompting public health authorities in many countries to consider a return to the use of mosquito nets, he added.