A new World Health Organization report shows that antibiotic resistance is rapidly increasing in poorer countries and conflict zones, and that resistant bacteria are mainly arriving in Estonia with tourists and refugees from the Ukraine, writes ERR News.
The WHO report was published in September, and Professor Tanel Tenson of the University of Tartu said the situation is getting worse. According to the professor, the worst situation is in Africa, where drinking water is often mixed with sewage due to climate change. He explained that climate change does not just mean more rain, it also means that when it does rain, it rains very heavily. When water from different sources mixes, the number of intestinal infections is rapidly increasing.
Tenson said that people often do not understand how the situation in Africa can be reflected in Estonia: “But how many people actually board planes on this planet every year? Over five billion.” And Estonians often travel to Africa, as well as Southeast Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, which are regions with a high prevalence of resistant bacteria. Thus, the bacteria are also brought home.
In Ukraine, on the other hand, there was a high prevalence of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis even before the war, and in shelters and temporary housing, where there is a lot of cramped conditions, the disease spreads much faster. On the front line, medics are forced to treat soldiers in unsanitary conditions. The professor pointed out that in conditions where dozens or hundreds of soldiers arrive from the battlefield, many of whom need amputation, a medic can feel lucky if he has the opportunity to change the scalpel.
Tenson is convinced that resistant bacteria come to Estonia from these regions.
True, he admitted that Estonia does not have such a developed data collection system to be able to name specific numbers.
The use of antibiotics is governed by the “One Health” principle, which means that the use of these drugs in humans, animals and agriculture is interconnected. Marju Sammul, a specialist in the State Agency of Medicines’ pharmacovigilance statistics bureau, pointed out that Estonia is among the countries that use the least antibiotics in agriculture, and their use in farm animals has been steadily decreasing since 2014. However, the same antibiotics that are used in humans are also used to treat pets. Sammul said that antibiotics should not be the first choice for treating pets.
A clearer picture of the use of antibiotics in treating pets will be visible after 2029. From then on, the collection of data on cases of resistant bacteria in pets in the European Union will be mandatory.
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