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You may not require a new generation of antibiotic to tackle a common cold, but restricting its use to only tertiary hospitals could create a different set of problems, say doctors and chemists, reacting to the Centre's draft policy on the use of antibiotics.
Though the principle of the policy is right - making it difficult to buy an antibiotic without a prescription, it however, does not address the irrational prescribing pattern, says Dr Amit Sengupta with the All-India Peoples' Science Network.
In fact, doctors end up prescribing two or three antibiotics for one ailment, observes the Indian Medical Associations' Secretary General, Dr D.R. Rai, underlining the need to train doctors, first. Though newer, third generation antibiotics are not required for common ailments, restricting their sale to only large speciality hospitals could create access problems in semi-urban and rural areas, he said.
Super-bug
The irrational use of antibiotics in the country has been a concern among doctors for sometime now, but the issue reached boiling-point after last year's controversy on the “super-bug”.
The online edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases had published a study on the ‘Emergence of a new antibiotic resistance mechanism in India, Pakistan and the UK' – triggering high decibel reactions across the country. The study even traced a drug-resistant super-bug strain of bacteria to New Delhi, after which it was named.
To check the unauthorised sale of antibiotics, the Centre now seeks to introduce a new category — Schedule H1, under the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, to regulate sale of antibiotics, exclusively.
The idea is to stop over-the-counter sale of antibiotics by making it as difficult to sell, as drugs under Schedule X – for example, cough syrup or psychiatric drugs that contain narcotic elements.
Not only are such medicines expected to be sold on the doctor's prescription, the chemist also needs to keep multiple copies of these documents to prevent abuse.
Training doctors to prescribe rationally and ensuring that antibiotics are sold on prescriptions can tackle the misuse, points out Mr J.S. Shinde, President of the All-India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists. But restricting newer antibiotics to only large hospitals could affect access to these drugs in several areas of the country, uncovered by large healthcare facilities, he added.
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