Cholera To Get More Virulent Due To Bad Antibiotics

A professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacy Practice, Titilayo Fakeye has argued that Nigerians should expect cholera outbreaks to be more severe as its sporadic cases continue to occur in the country because Vibrio cholera, the germ that causes it, had developed 100 per cent resistance to commonly available antibiotics used for its treatment in the country.

Fakeye who spoke during a two-day international webinar titled “Antimicrobial Resistance: Current Perspective and Future Challenge” by Shoolini University, India, said that resistance of cholera-causing germs to antibiotics had become a problem since 2010.

According to him, “by 2010, it has gone as high as 100 per cent and that is a problem especially with the current small outbreaks of cholera in south-west Nigeria.”

The expert declared that so many disease-causing germs in the country had developed resistance to most available antibiotics due to self medication, misuse of antibiotics, improper disposal of leftover antibiotics, misuse of antibiotics in animal husbandry as well as the importation of resistant strains of germs.