The Ministry of Health is advocating the use of antibiotics on prescription and strictly managing the sale of antibiotics at drug stores in efforts to curb the rampant use of these medicines.

Addressing a meeting held in response to the World Health Day in Hanoi on April 7 on the theme “Antimicrobial resistance: no action today, no cure tomorrow”, Health Minister Nguyen Quoc Trieu said the medical sector will set up a national network to monitor multiple antibiotic resistant bacteria and closely supervise anti-infection activities in hospitals.

The sector will conduct more research on anti-bio resistant virus strains and educational campaigns on the danger and measures to prevent drug resistant viruses on the media, he added.

The acting chief representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Vietnam, Graham Harrison said the theme of the World Health Day 2011 “Antimicrobial resistance: no action today, no cure tomorrow” aims to draw people’s attention to the increasing concern over antimicrobial resistance.

To prevent the threat of antimicrobial resistance, WHO called on nations to increase their supervision capability and microorganism tests, ensure constant access to necessary medicine and regulate and promote logical use of medicine in animal breeding and for human, he said.

According to WHO, 58 nations reported the existence of multidrug resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in 2010. It is estimated that an additional 440,000 people have MDR-TB worldwide and almost a third of them die each year.

Vietnam has an estimated 5,900 MDR-TB patients, of which 1,800 die of the disease each year./.