×
NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

Join antimicrobial resistance fight— agric sector urged

News
AGRICULTURALISTS should join the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR) because it is contributing to the global scourge, World Health Organisation representative to Zimbabwe, David Okello, has said.

AGRICULTURALISTS should join the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR) because it is contributing to the global scourge, World Health Organisation representative to Zimbabwe, David Okello, has said.

BY MUNESU NYAKUDYA

“Antimicrobial resistance is a problem not just in our hospitals, but also in our farms and in our food … the agriculture sector should take their share of responsibility, both by using antimicrobials more responsibly and by cutting down use,” Okello told a breakfast meeting on

Tuesday, where doctors sought to apprise the media that the agricultural sector should shoulder its fair share of responsibility in the fight against antimicrobial resistance, citing “abuse in the food industry”.

“Already there is massive use of antibiotics by food industries which has given rise to antimicrobial resistance.

“In the agricultural sector here in Zimbabwe there is a temptation to over-prescribe the best medicines for even simple conditions, we are using bigger guns to fight small animals.”

Principal director for veterinary services in the Ministry of Agriculture, Unesu Ushewokunze Obatolu, agreed that there had been misuse of antimicrobials.

“We have been mismanaging antimicrobials, which is why we have seen an escalation of the development of antimicrobial resistance.

“The key driver of AMR in the agricultural sector is that there is inadequate coverage of sanitary supervision, that is our coverage by professionals, because we tend to administer our services on area basis, so one can be responsible for say a region, a ward, a district or province and we may only have one or two expects in that area,” Obatolu said.

“So the tendency is that farmers will request to use drugs, and they will use them with very minimum supervision”.

Obatolu said veterinary staff were working with very limited supervision and sometimes just used their judgment to do what they think was best in a given case.