Event to promote responsible use of antibiotics

A ceremony, aiming to commit using antibiotics responsibly, was held in at the Thong Nhat Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, on December 21.

At the event
At the event

Co-organised by the Ministry of Health in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ho Chi Minh City municipal People's Committee, the event featured the participation of a large number of medical staff, doctors, pharmacists, people working in agriculture and the food industry, and medical students.

The event aimed to raise awareness of drug resistance and to encourage people to actively participate in in actions to prevent the improper use of antibiotics and antibiotic abuse.

Speaking at the ceremony, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Truong Son, Deputy Minister of Health, said the use of antibiotics is very necessary to treat diseases for humans as well as animals. However, if the use of antibiotics is not reasonable or unnecessary, antibiotic abuse can increase the antibiotic resistance of bacteria causing disease.

Meanwhile, for decades, the world's medical industry has had relatively few new antibiotics, with a shortage of effective antibiotics for treating multi-resistant bacterial infections.

According to WHO’s statistics, hundreds of thousands of people die each year from drug resistance (800,000 in 2017) and spend tens of billions of dollars on drug resistance.