Antibiotic medicines useless to 70 percent of outpatients: study

Based on tests conducted by the National Health Research Institutes and leading local hospitals, patients have shown bacterial resistance to quite a few antibiotic medicines against escherichia coli, with the resistance rate for Tier 1 antibiotic Ampicillin hitting a high of 71 percent.

The same tests also indicated that 54.7 percent of outpatients have shown bacterial resistance to Tier 2 antibiotic Baktar. This means that these patients will be unable to have their diseases easily managed even after taking Tier 2 antibiotic medicines.

If Tier 1 and Tier 2 antibiotic medicines prove useless for patients, doctors have to use Tier 3 medicines. But it was also found that 16 percent of outpatients have developed bacterial resistance to Tier 3 antibiotic Ciprofloxacin.

To counter this trend, the Centers for Disease Control, the Infectious Disease Society of Taiwan, the Nosocomial Infection Control Society of Taiwan, and Mackay Memorial Hospital jointly sponsored a public sanitation forum to seek solutions to the worsening bacterial resistance to antibiotic medicines.

At the forum, Chairman Lee Tsong-ming of the Nosocomial Infection Control Society of Taiwan, said that around 5,000 patients die of in-hospital infections, especially in intensive-care units, as a result of the massive use of antibiotic medicines.

A survey carried out by the National Health Research Institutes showed that in-hospital infections are mainly caused by two bacteria, namely candidiasis and acinetobacter baumanni, which usually leads to the fatal disease, sepsis.

As oral antibiotic medicines are easily accessible, people are urged not to recklessly use such medicines, lest they should suffer increasing bacterial resistance to such medicines.

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