Africa-Press – Cape verde. The president of the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) said this Thursday that antibiotic resistance has been “a growing problem” globally and that resistance to penicillin has been found in Cape Verde.
Maria da Luz Lima made this statement to the press after the opening ceremony of a capacity-building action to strengthen skills on “Antimicrobial Resistance,” carried out within the framework of the “One Health” approach.
“We have cases in hospitals, particularly in central hospitals, where they start with a basic antibiotic, which is effective for the disease, but then there is no improvement, so the dose is increased or a more potent antibiotic is used so that the person can recover,” she commented, recommending that people not self-medicate.
According to the president of INSP, penicillin was an effective treatment for tonsillitis a few years ago, but today it is no longer used in many countries because the microorganism is resistant, so more potent medications are being used.
Faced with this resistance, the need to change or increase the doses of antibiotics or antivirals to make them more efficient and potent than antimicrobials was highlighted, emphasizing, on the other hand, that the world will probably return to the pre-antibiotic era in the future, that is, “medicines will cease to be effective and everything will have to be rediscovered”.
Given this idea, he stated that the excessive use of antimicrobials is the main factor accelerating resistance and affecting human, animal and environmental health, hence its inclusion in the “One Health” approach.
“Therefore, in addition to training, we are also seeing if Cape Verde has a complex antimicrobial resistance surveillance system; we need laboratories with the capacity to perform the tests, and national standards that respond to the needs of the existing disease profile and how they should be treated,” he added, admitting that it is a problem that requires “a lot of joint action from the three health sectors”.
He recalled that in 2023/2024 the INSP (National Institute of Public Health) conducted a study on the subject and produced a microbiological map that includes the profile of antimicrobials and resistance methods in Cape Verde, emphasizing that they are currently working with hospitals to disseminate it.
“It is necessary to sensitize the population not to buy antimicrobial medications indiscriminately; they must have a medical prescription. In other words, by focusing on prevention, we believe that Cape Verde can take an important step in the fight against antimicrobials,” he concluded, pointing to public awareness as an important means since the work is multisectoral.
The training, which involves 40 professionals, including doctors, veterinarians, biologists, environmental technicians, microbiologists, and laboratory technicians, aims to promote a multisectoral and collaborative approach.
The regional initiative, funded by the World Bank Group, which includes Cape Verde, Guinea, and Liberia, is carried out within the framework of the Health Security in West and Central Africa (HeSP) Program.
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