The irrational and random use of antibiotics can create superbugs. Therefore, for the decades, WHO (World Health Organization) has been advising the government and people of every country for the rational use of antibiotics to preserve the efficacy of antibiotics for future generations.
Dr Hanan Balkhy, Assistant Director-General of WHO, Division of Antimicrobial resistance explained the risks and reasons behind these risks if people practise the irrational use of antibiotics. People use these antibiotics to kill bacteria causing disease to humans. But these bacteria also try to survive and adopt different strategies to escape the effect of the antibiotics. Therefore, it is very vital to preserve the efficacy of antibiotics. Otherwise, these antibiotics will not protect us even from common injuries. Dr Hanan Balkhy indicated three points to follow when taking antibiotics.
- Take antibiotics only when your doctor or health care provider prescribe it for you.
- Complete the antibiotic course based on the advice provided by your doctor. If you do not complete the course, bacteria will develop mechanisms to become irresponsive to these antibiotics.
- You must not share your antibiotic with family or friends because physician or health care provider should prescribe it for the person based on specific signs and symptoms. Some certain viral infections really do not require antibiotics.
Dr Hanan Balkhy reported that WHO is working with three other critical organizations, such as animal health, environmental health and agriculture to identify the best hygiene methods to avoid exposure to infection.
Source: WHO, 2023. URL: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/media-resources/science-in-5/episode-99-three-things-to-keep-in-mind-when-taking-antibiotics.
Artificial intelligence in healthcare sectors
Artificial intelligence (AI) is believed to assist doctors to make better clinical decisions. Digital health service is creating the availability of big healthcare database. On the other hand, scientists are developing different big data analytic methods, which have made a lot of progress to successfully apply AI in healthcare research. Using relevant clinical questions, powerful AI techniques can find out clinically relevant information from massive healthcare database, and thus can help doctors to make clinical decision. Artificial intelligence can make contribution in radiology and some other certain functional areas of healthcare by replacing the needs of human judgement. But the most important thing to remember is that AI should be used ethically and responsibly in healthcare sectors.
Source: Jiang F, Jiang Y, Zhi H, et al., Artificial intelligence in healthcare: past, present and future. Stroke and Vascular Neurology 2017;2:
