The World Keeps Moving From One Drug-Resistance Type Crisis to Another

According to an article published on The Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) website, malaria drug-resistant is emerging in Africa [1]. When I came across this article, I immediately reflected on what my colleagues and I had seen in most consultation registers during the onsite supportive supervision of malaria activities carried out in various health facilities (HFs) in the South West region of Cameroon. Therefore, I am not surprised by this latest development. At the rate at which we were seeing over-diagnosis of malaria, especially severe malaria cases, I feared this was going to happen eventually.

We are still fighting against antibiotic resistance, and here we are about to get into another drug-resistant crisis. What do we mean by drug resistance? Drug resistance is when a medication loses its effectiveness in treating a disease or condition [2]. Misuse and overuse of medicines are the causes of drug resistance. When you hear of antibiotic resistance, it means these medications are no longer effective in treating bacterial infections because the germs have adapted to these medicines, can not be killed, and continue to grow [2]. The same applies to malaria drug resistance.

From the doctor’s (MDs) or nurse’s consultation registers, we noticed most were prescribing malaria treatments for patients whose malaria parasite (mp) test results were negative. When we investigated further, the response we got back was that, from the patient’s clinical signs and symptoms possessed during the consultation, they still believed it must be malaria. When I see and hear things done like this, it implies that laboratory technicians or the tools used in conducting the test are faulty. I mean, how do you write simple or severe malaria as a confirmed diagnosis when the mp test results clearly state that it was negative?

As the coordinator for the malaria program at the South West Regional Delegation of Public Health, Dr. Besong Tabot Itoe, regularly says, “everything is not malaria.” He has gone over this issue with all the HFs several times and has had numerous building capacity sessions. Some MDs and nurses just keep going back to their old ways. We can not be talking about solutions to this crisis when the MDs and nurses know what they are doing. It should not be complex at all. I love what was asked at the end of the article on Gavi. “Are we capable of learning from history?”[1].

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is no. If we were learning from history, we would not be having the same public health issues over and over again.

References

1. Pawar, P. (2022). Drug-Resistant Malaria Is Emerging in Africa. Is the World Ready? Retrieved 6 February 2022, from https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/drug-resistant-malaria-emerging-africa-world-ready

2. Antimicrobial resistance. (2022). Retrieved 6 February 2022, from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial-resistance