A study conducted by the state health department revealed this alarming finding. This claim came from none other than N S Narayan Swaroop Nigam, principal secretary in charge of the health department headed by the chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
While addressing in a seminar, ‘Sepsis prevention awareness programme’ held at Swasthya Bhavan, the health department headquarters at Salt Lake, on Friday Mr Nigam said, “We are the highest in the country in terms of antibiotics consumption. While analyzing the use of antibiotics in our state we got this very important data.”
According to the study, the resistance rate of a large number of special category and common antibiotics in the state is more than 60 per cent.
A team of microbiology experts of the health department analyzed positive reports of more than 32,000 culture and sensitivity tests of patients of government hospi- tals during the past one year and revealed the findings.
The test reports are uploaded in the portal of microbial identification, anti-microbial resistance detection system of the health department.
“Apart from you (doctors) who are sitting here, the common public are also doctors because the latter consume antibiotics at their whims. For instance, they increase the dose of antibiotics for two days or three days. This is sheer nonsense. This unbridled use of antibiotics has to be stopped,” Mr Nigam said. “Prescriptions made by doctors in government and private hospitals should be checked to find out whether antibiotics are prescribed rationally or not,” the principal secretary said.
He also stressed the need for implementing measures in hospitals whether they are following anti- microbial protocols to prevent hospital acquired infections among patients.
Dr Debashis Bhattacharya, DME, and Dr Siddhartha Niyogi, DHS, were present in the pro- gramme.
