Kabale regional referral hospital has suspended the use of an antibiotic, IV Ceftrianxone 1g powder citing ineffectiveness in treating some bacterial infections.
IV Ceftrianxone 1g powder is an antibiotic used by health workers to treat bacterial infections and diseases like urinary tract infections, gonorrhea, pneumonia, skin infections, and pelvic inflammatory diseases among others.
Antimicrobials including antibiotics are the backbone of modern medicine and allow doctors to treat deadly infections successfully, and make essential health services safer for everyone but their overuse and misuse are the main drivers of drug-resistant pathogens.
Antimicrobial resistance is a global crisis threatening 4.1 million lives in Africa by 2050. AMR makes common illnesses untreatable as bacteria, parasites and viruses mutate and become resistant to medicines.
Ceftriaxone was patented in 1978 and approved for medical use in 1982. It is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines.
According to Lauben Kyomukama, the medicine and therapeutic committee chairperson of Kabale Regional Referral Hospital, the decision to suspend the use of the drug was reached this month following enough research about its (in)effectiveness.
Kyomukama says that they started researching the effectiveness of the drug two years ago at the hospital after registering complaints that the drug was not leading to the recovery of patients even if they adhered to the dosage.
Without revealing the exact number of patients they followed up, Kyomukama says that for the last two years, only 15 percent of the patients that were treated fully recovered.
The hospital has now replaced it with using Benzylpenicillin 1MU/600MG (PFR) IM whose findings currently show that it is now more effective in managing common bacterial infections than IV Ceftrianxone 1g powder as more investigations continue.