TRYING to treat a cold with antibiotics is like trying to clean your toilet with your toothbrush, a Hunter GP says.
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Dr Lee Fong, clinical director for GP Access After Hours and a member of the Hunter GP association, said people had been brought up to expect antibiotics from a doctor whenever they were sick, but both doctors and patients needed to be more aware of the long term consequences of using antibiotics unnecessarily.
Dr Fong said the overuse of antibiotics could lead to antimicrobial resistance – a “big problem” that could herald a return to the pre-antibiotic era of the 1930s, where a simple skin infection could kill.
“I know when I was a kid, mum would take me to the GP with a sore throat, or a cough, or a sore ear, and we’d always walk out with a prescription for some pink stuff that tasted bad and made my pee smell funny,” Dr Fong said.
“But most coughs/colds/sore throats/ear infections are caused by viruses, which antibiotics don’t touch.
“Trying to treat a cold with antibiotics is like trying to clean your toilet with your toothbrush.
“It’s the wrong tool for the job, and then when you really need your toothbrush, you’ve messed it up.”
Dr Fong said antibiotics killed off susceptible bacteria, but left behind resistant bacteria.
“If we then get infected with an antibiotic-resistant organism, we’re likely to be sicker for longer, and there’s greater chance of us dying from it,” he said.
Without antibiotics, he said transplants and surgery would become very dangerous.
Australia was one of the highest users of antibiotics per person in the developed world, with around 22 million prescriptions written every year in primary care.
“We prescribe nearly twice as many antibiotics as our colleagues in Denmark, the Netherlands or Sweden – and yet our health outcomes are not really any different,” he said.
Doctors had a role to play by not prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily, and patients needed to understand that not all illnesses should be treated with them.
“Quite a lot of people still ask for antibiotics when they are not necessary, but more and more people are appreciating that using antibiotics unnecessarily can be harmful to both the individual and society more widely,” Dr Fong said. “The sooner we all are educated about this, the better off we, and our children, will be.”
