Antibiotics Misuse

Antibiotics are among the most common drugs.  They are also known as antibacterial. Antibiotics are medications that destroy or slow down the growth of bacteria.  They include a range of powerful drugs that are used to treat diseases caused by bacteria.

Antibiotics cannot treat viral infections, such as cold, flu and most coughs. They are powerful medicines that fight bacteria causing diseases and has the ability to save lives when used appropriately.

Antibiotics are similar to water, the same water we drink to live has the ability to kill us. There are very few groups of antibiotics. Most times when you abuse drugs in a particular group, the other groups may likely not work again. When there’s abuse, it leads to resistance. When the person needs it the most, it loses its efficiency.

The sad thing here is that antibiotics have become the most abused drug because we fail to go to the hospital to get the proper diagnosis. We prefer to go over the counter and just buy them and take them. Even in cases where it is prescribed, we fail to complete it.

This behavior leads to resistance which is referred to when a drug has a reduced potency of destroying the bacteria. The problem here is that we don’t think there’s anything wrong with it since “disease no dey kill African”. However, we forget to think about the future. When there’s a case of a serious and our body does not respond to it anymore. You can guess what happens at that point, I don’t want to be the one to break the bad news to you.

In an article on the psychology of antibiotics misuse, the field of behavioral economics has identified tendencies and biases that can cause us to act against our own best interests. One of the tendencies relevant to antibiotic prescribing is “action bias.” Let’s look at the all-too-common scenario of the patient with a nasty chest cold. The telltale signs of bacterial infection, such as dark brown sputum, are not present. This means that antibiotics probably won’t help. Yet patients don’t want to be told to go home and rest.

They want their doctor to do something- write a prescription or give a diagnostic test, that is if one exists. The physician feels the pressure to prescribe.