The Principal Nursing Officer of Ijede General Hospital, Matron Mary Okoh, has disclosed that failure to address Antibiotics Resistance in Nigeria could lead to 10million deaths.

Matron Mary Okoh disclosed this during the periodic Continuous Medical Education (CME) programme organised for medical staff of the facility.

She described Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) as a phenomenon driven by rampant misuse of antimicrobial agents, adding that the effects of antibiotic resistance could be a bigger crisis than the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), if care is not taken.

Okoh enumerated the causes of antibiotic resistance to include over-prescription of antibiotics to patients, incomplete medical treatment, abuse of antibiotics in livestock and fish farming, lack of hygiene, poor sanitation, and lack of introduction of new antibiotics.

She disclosed that failure to address the problem of antibiotics resistance could result in 10 million deaths by 2050.

Matron Mary Okoh stressed that AMR strikes hardest on poor treatment of resistant infections, untreatable infections in animals, which threaten sustainable food production of the growing population and antibiotic residues from hospitals.

While giving a statistical analysis of AMR in Nigeria, Okoh revealed that the systematic review on antibiotics use carried out by Nigeria in 2017 indicated that only 42% of patients examined completed the prescribed dose of antibiotics.

The Matron opined that increasing awareness, promoting rational access to antibiotics and antimicrobial stewardship, investing in research to quantify the cost of resistance and developing new antimicrobials, can help curb the incidence of antimicrobial resistance.