Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy says Guyana would be pushing for the issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to be placed on the agenda for the Caricom Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED).
During his presentation at the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) and the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Co-operation (CTA) Caribbean Week of Agriculture on AMR to antibiotics, Ramsammy stated that globally the issue needed more focus.
He said it was imperative for the dialogue to begin in the Caribbean region. “2015 CWA therefore must provide a report on what advances we’ve made in the year since 2014 Surname CWA this is my charge as minister of agriculture of the food basket of the Caribbean,” the minister stated.
He stated that this was a subject he was going to raise at Friday’s COTED meeting of agriculture ministers so that there could be serious discussion leading up to the United Nations Sustainable Development meeting next year.
According to the World Health Organisation, AMR is resistance of a microorganism to an antimicrobial drug that was originally effective for treatment of infections caused by it.
This class of microorganisms (including bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites) are able to resist attack by antimicrobial drugs such as antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, and antimalarials.
Ramsammy charged that for food security and global health reasons, AMR was just as important as climate change. He said that for years AMR has continued to be as stumbling block for the region and has not firmly been placed on the agenda.
He said “while we believe we have to firmly put it on the agenda we have done very little work to address the causes and finger pointing will not resolve the problem.”
Ramsammy stated that neither the agriculture sector nor the health sector, where antibiotic abuse existed, needed to become defensive and instead education was imperative.
The former health minister revealed that the US Centers for Disease Control has identified 18 categories of very difficult to manage infections and the World Health Organisation had identified an additional seven. He said the microbes were outsmarting the human capacity and the global community had to act now as opposed to later.
Ramsammy noted that in the region AMR was being discussed since 2001 and the timing was now critical. He said the region could follow suit with Guyana by adding policies at the national level to deal with antibiotic abuse. He said that the “extensive, intensive and injudicious use of antimicrobials” has resulted in the high level of resistance.
He said the Caribbean has led the charge on many fronts and since AMR was first put on the table at last year’s CWA held in Guyana he was happy to see that it had made the “natural progression in assuming importance and becoming policy.”
Dr Gustavo Bretas of the Pan American Health Organisation stated that the conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies, which drive the AMR industry, and society has led to far-reaching consequences. He said that there were constraints that the region currently had to work within due to the lack of facilities to study AMR.
Participants of the seminar came to a consensus that education was of the utmost importance. Participants from across the region recalled how prescription drugs were readily available without doctor’s prescriptions. Various persons highlighted that farmers did not necessarily know what they were buying when purchasing feed. One man said the region could look at placing mandatory ingredient lists inclusive of antibiotics used on the packing. Another participant stated that regionally the cost of prescription drugs often times denoted their effectiveness and poorer persons would abuse cheaper drugs hoping for better results.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Livestock and Development Officer Dr Cedric Lazarus, during a press briefing, noted that AMR needed to be addressed now because over the past 10 years no new antibiotics have been developed. He said the Caribbean could not be put in a place where it had to play catch up in managing AMR and that meant ensuring the current number of antibiotics remained reliable in treating diseases effectively.
