How much faith do you have in the scrawls your doctors write when prescribing drugs?
A discussion over the weekend encouraged patients to be more critical in identifying the most common problems with prescriptions: too many antibiotics, unnecessary drugs and not enough generic drugs.
Oversights attributed to unintelligible writing are reportedly also a serious problem, although less common.
Gadjah Mada University's (UGM) School of Medicine pharmacology professor Iwan Dwi Prahasto showed during the discussion an example of an actual prescription for six antibiotics of different brands but of similar function. He warned that overuse of antibiotics could lead to multi-drug resistance. Several recent studies show that many doctors prescribe antibiotics that are not necessary for treating certain illnesses.
"Excessive use of antibiotics has emerged as one of the most serious health problems... including in Indonesia, because it can severely affect health," he said in a discussion titled "Rational Use of Antibiotics to Prevent Multi-drug Resistance" ahead of World Health Day 2011 on April 7.
Inappropriate use of antibiotics involves inaccurate frequency of use and dosage, Iwan said.
A study carried out by the UGM pharmacology unit and the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) in 1998 found that between 92 to 98 percent of patients with non-pneumonia acute respiratory infections received at least one type of antibiotics when they went to community health centers for medical treatment. The study showed that in private health service centers inappropriate prescriptions of antibiotics reached between 82 and 89 percent.
A national survey in 2009 found that antibiotics had been prescribed for diseases caused by viruses, such as influenza.
Doctors often prescribe many different types of medicines for their patients, including expensive vitamins that are actually unnecessary, the discussion heard.
The unpopularity of generic drugs among doctors' prescriptions has also been a lingering problem that the government hopes to address by campaigning about the efficacy of such drugs.
Sharad Adhikary, a World Health Organization (WHO) environmental health adviser at the Indonesia country office, said WHO was working with the Indonesian Health Ministry to support more rational use of drugs. (ebf)