Experts are concerned about overuse of antibiotics in Thailand
Health experts are urging less use of antibiotics as the number of resistant infections is on the rise. The country has 80.000 AMR (antimicrobial resistance) cases per year, leading to longer hospital stays, a higher mortality rate and economic damage of 40 billion baht.
Thailand is showing an alarming increase in infections resistant to antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is considered a major public health problem.
Antibiotics are medicines used when you have an infection caused by a bacteria. When antibiotics are used too often, bacteria can become insensitive (resistant) to them. The medicine then no longer works; there is antibiotic resistance.
“The widespread and inappropriate use” of antibiotics in aquaculture and agriculture has serious consequences for health and the environment,” said Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives Prapat Pothasuthon.
In 2016, the government approved Thailand's first five-year national strategic plan for antimicrobial resistance. The plan aims to reduce ABR morbidity by 50%, reduce antimicrobial use by 20% to 30%, and increase public awareness of AMR by 20%.
Source: Bangkok Post
That's what you get when doctors only feel like 'good doctors' when they send the (not) sick person away with at least 5 bags of pills, vitamins, ointments and brightly colored sweets for their wet nose or itchy earlobe. Or does the non-expert public itself want this colored attention? 'I won't be sick until I get 5 kinds of pills' is the impression I get from Thai clinics and Thai people, and doctors seem to have to foot the bill with a multitude of medicines. Their credibility starts to increase with the amount of bags….
For a wet nose and a hoarse throat, the antibiotic slide is immediately opened because the people want it, or the doctor feels he has to prove himself. Antibiotics are the candy of the week here.
I have often seen pharmacists who self-diagnose their customers and there comes that jar of antibiotics; no leaflet for the patient, no serious warning 'finish the course!' and if you only have money for 3 pills, the pharmacist will only give you 3 pills because the stove must also remain lit.
No, this doesn't surprise me. This is how you stir up resistance and the people who really have something wrong with it will soon be the victims.
I have had to thank here several times at the pharmacy for antibiotics. For a pimple on your cheek you immediately get a strip of antibiotics.
I looked them up some numbers and they are indeed shockingly high.
In Thailand, 19.000 people die each year from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. That is 23.000 in the US and 25.000 in Europe, almost a factor of 5 less than in Thailand.
In the small clinics that doctors open at the end of the afternoon, doctors only earn money from the sale of medicines, and of course you can also get them in any pharmacy.
Just selling drugs probably causes fewer deaths.
Selling drugs really does not cause fewer deaths, you just don't know here in Thailand whether he or she died of an overdose.
Apparently people don't like to talk about the fact that a son or daughter died from it, apparently too ashamed.
I have been living here in our organic farm in Kantararom - Sisaket for 7 years. 4 serious burglaries by junkies who do not want to work for their Yaba even though the price has been halved.
When I ask my wife who died, it is either an old woman or a well-known young woman or man
who died after falling ill the burial-burning is remarkably quick.
The deputy minister actually already indicates what the government itself should check for, or for excessive use on healthy animals.
As a consumer, I have no idea how much drug residue is in my piece of meat or shrimp.
Will it be more in the Big C, Makro or Tesco Lotus kilo-bangers or in the meat on the local market?
If you can buy antibiotics per pill in almost every pharmacy, what are you doing? The ideal way to breed resistant bacteria . And they don't stop at the border that will become a global problem.
as a layman it is of course very difficult to determine what you need on the spot with a doctor.
My experience is that people only give a bag of pills.
2 times had problems with wrong medicines.
When I get home, I will now first check the internet at the website of the NHG (Dutch General Practitioners Association) to see whether the medicines are suitable and whether they are also necessary and what people advise.
I also look at the side effects for each medication.
If I don't want certain medicines, I will return them and usually get my money back.
An ear doctor made it so clear that he really only gave the wrong medicines and did not want to give the necessary medicines. Got angry and the next day I had what I needed. After 3 months of worrying, I was cured in 10 days. 500 each time for consultation (15 times)
Now wiser….check everything.
Information is so lacking here in all areas. Whether they will listen to it is another matter