http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011031/hl/antibiotics_2.html
Wednesday October 31 10:38 AM ET
By Richard Waddington
GENEVA (Reuters) - A top World Health Organisation (WHO) official warned on Tuesday
against the blanket use of antibiotics as a defence against anthrax, saying it
could do more harm than good.
As more suspected cases of the potentially fatal disease emerged in the
United States, the head of the WHO communicable diseases programme said
antibiotics should be prescribed only when there was reasonable cause to think
a person had been in contact with anthrax.
The use of antibiotics as ``just in case'' protection by people alarmed by
reports that anthrax had been found in letters could leave them more
susceptible to other unrelated infections, David Heymann told Reuters.
``If you are not at risk, you do yourselves and others a disservice by
demanding antibiotics,'' Heymann said in an interview at the Geneva-based
United Nations (news
- web
sites) agency.
Heymann said that use of antibiotics such as penicillin and
ciprofloxacin--which under its brand name Cipro has become virtually a
household name--when no infection was present could merely create resistance to
them.
Heymann said he fully understood the decision of US health authorities to
give antibiotics to thousands of postal service workers who might have come in
contact with contaminated mail.
Ciprofloxacin is one of several treatments, including doxycycline and
penicillin, for the usually fatal pulmonary form of anthrax, and other more
common antibiotics can successfully treat the skin variety.
``Because pulmonary anthrax can be fatal, they have taken a public health
decision that is quite understandable,'' he said. But ``it should not be turned
into a signal for everybody to demand Cipro,'' he added. An organism can become
resistant to antibiotics very quickly and can be passed from one person to
another just like a virus.
The declining potency of some antibiotics--notably penicillin--resulting
from widespread use of what was once considered almost a panacea has long been
a major WHO concern.
Penicillin, for example, can no longer be used against gonorrhoea because
strains of the sexually transmitted disease have evolved that are immune to the
antibiotic.
Heymann said it was important that people avoid self-medication and that
doctors dispense antibiotics for anthrax only when they were sure there was a
real risk.
``One has to remember there is a much greater chance of catching pneumonia
than of contracting anthrax,'' he said.
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