Materia Medica Malaysiana

Treat antibiotics with care

Health director-general Datuk Dr Ismail Merican said there was a tendency for some clinicians to use the latest or the most powerful antibiotics which may not be necessary.
For example, Dr Ismail said, if a patient suffers from community-acquired pneumonia, the best antibiotic would be penicillin or erythromycin unless the patient is resistant or allergic to them.
He said there was a tendency for doctors to use higher-end antibiotics thinking that they might be the best.
"In certain situations where the patient is very ill, the doctors may resort to using higher-end antibiotics as they do not want to take the risk of him getting more ill. These are exceptional circumstances."
For patients suffering from septicaemia, Dr Ismail said they needed the newer generation antibiotics.
On a report that doctors in a hospital in Singapore had detected the antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria vancomycin-resistant enterococci or VRE in 42 patients, he said:
"We keep abreast with what is going on in hospitals around the world in terms of antimicrobial resistant."
The outbreak prompted the facility to take precautions including postponing 600 surgeries scheduled over the coming two weeks.
Dr Ismail, who heads the Health Ministry’s Infection Control and Antibiotic Committee, said all state health directors and hospitals had been alerted about VRE.