Quiet death from antibiotic misuse | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

Quiet death from antibiotic misuse

April 12, 2011 about Health, News

LookAtVietnam - Most of antibiotics have become useless because bacteria have adapted to resist the drugs. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists Vietnam among the countries with the highest drug-resistance rate in the world.

When they have flu symptoms like cough, sore throat, sneezing, or headache, many Vietnamese turn away from doctors and decide they know what drugs to take. They can easily buy all kinds of medicines, including antibiotics, without prescriptions, at any drugstore.
Many people only visit a doctor when their condition worsens or they have something they cannot diagnose themselves.
According to a recent report, Bach Mai’s clinical immunity and allergy department receives three or four patients a day with complications caused by self-prescribed drugs.
They have body redness if it is a mild case and anaphylaxis if more serious (a severe, whole-body allergic reaction to a chemical), and even die if they are not rushed to hospital in time, a doctor says.
Self-prescribed drugs to treat eye problems could also lead to grave consequences, Dr Hoang Cuong of the Central Eye Hospital warns.
Instances of patients permanently losing their sight are not rare since the use of wrong drugs can cause corneal ulcers and cataracts, he explains.
Many drugs that people use to treat glaucoma can have serious side effects like cardiac failure and increase the risk of asthma, he warned further.
Allergies to antibiotics like penicillin, ampicillin, streptomycin, tetracylin, analgin, and phenacetin can also lead to lung, liver, and kidney failure which can quickly cause death if not treated soon.
Clearly, spending a little more time and money to see a doctor can save many people from such terrible fates.
However, there are problems with doctors in writing wrong prescriptions. As any patient wishes to be well again quickly, some doctors, especially those at private clinics often prescript strong and expensive antibiotics to cure very simple diseases.
According to survey by the Health Insurance Department under the Health Ministry at a big hospital in Hanoi, the average number of medicines in a prescription is 7.06. Some prescriptions have up to 10-20 kinds of drugs. Antibiotics are very popular. For some wards, antibiotics appear in 100 percent of prescriptions.
It is also very common to combine several kinds of antibiotics in one prescription, with half of them unnecessary, according to the Health Ministry’s Medicine and Treatment Council.
Inspections at some health stations show that prescriptions are mainly written by physicians, with the formula: antibiotics-antipyretic-vitamins. The doses are often strong and used for a long time.
Another research conducted at 19 hospitals in Hanoi, HCM City and Hai Phong in 2009-2010 reveals that four popular bacteria (acinetobacter spp, pseudomonas spp, e.coli, klebsiella) resist many kinds of antibiotics.
It is not only in Vietnam but also around the world that many kinds of antibiotics have lost their effect.
Minister of Health Nguyen Quoc Trieu said considering antibiotics as the “wonderful remedy” to cure all kinds of infected diseases, antibiotics have been used in long time, overused resulted in anti-drugs of bacteria.
“Recently, many scientists in the world have warned of the appearance of anti-drug genes of bacteria against some antibiotics of carbapennem group, a new group of antibiotics. This has caused worries over the strong changes of anti-drug bacteria,” Trieu said.
In Vietnam, research works also detect some kinds of bacteria which resist many kinds of antibiotics. Popular antibiotics like penicillin, tetracycline and streptomycine are nearly harmless to many kinds of bacteria.
WHO General Director Margaret Chan has warned of the return to the period before antibiotics were discovered.
Experts said that antibiotics should be only used in serious cases and patients should not misuse them.
Source: Dan Tri/VNE

Thanh Nien Daily | Suspect diabetes drug still sold in Vietnam

Last updated: 11/19/2010 13:35

Mediator tables, banned in several European countries on health concerns, are still widely sold in the country

The diabetes and weight loss drug Mediator, recently linked to 500 deaths worldwide, and banned in some Europe countries is still being sold widely in Vietnam.

The French Health Minister had recently warned any users of the drug — the brand name for benflourex in France — between 2006 and 2009 to see their doctor and get tested immediately for heart valve damage.

It followed a warning by France’s drug safety body l’Afssaps on Mediator’s active ingredient benfluorex. Since its launch in 1976, “analyses by expert epidemiologists estimate that about 500 deaths could be attributable to benfluorex,” it said.

The drug, produced by France-based pharmaceutical giant Servier, has been banned in France, the United States, Spain and Italy.

The European Medicines Agency pulled benflourex from the market November last year, saying it had little effect on diabetes and might lead to a dangerous thickening of heart valves.

Meanwhile Vietnam Drug Administration at the Health Ministry issued a statement on August 30 this year calling for the withdrawal of the drug's registration, only after requested by Servier.

Local health agencies and hospitals only received the order about withdrawing the registration two weeks after that.

And the administration still allows the batches that are produced before August 30 to be sold until they expire.

A pharmacist named M. in Ho Chi Minh City said according to the administration, many Mediator batches will still be on the market for three to four years from now.

The pharmacist said the administration might be helping importers to sell all the drugs they have bought. “Then what about people’s health?”

Several pharmacies in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City said they haven't received any notice from the authorities, but were only informed in recent months by Mediator distributors that they would stop supplying the drug.

Most users were not updated about possible dangers of the drug but only know that it is no longer sold overseas. Thus many drug stores in HCMC have been charging more for the tablets.

Mediator has been sold on Vietnam market for around 20 years. It has been used by around 5 million people worldwide since 1976.

Reported by Thanh Tung - Lien Chau

- Five foreigners sentenced to death for drug transport

The Quang Ninh provincial People’s Court on December 25 handed down death sentences on five foreign nationals on charges of illegal cross-border transport of drug and money.

The five defendants at the court on December 25. (Photo: Vnexpress)

The five included 52-year-old Lu Minh Cheng and 42-year-old Wang Hui Lan from Guangzhou city; Ieong Chi Kai, 52, from Macau; and Chan Kwok Kwong, 57, and Ngan Chiu Kuen, 42, from Hong Kong.

According to the indictment, on April 22, 2008, Lu Ming Cheng was hired to transport two containers containing jeans and marijuana from Vietnam ’s northeastern province of Quang Ninh to Canada .

On April 25, 2008, Lu Ming Cheng together with Ieong Chi Lai and Ngan Chiu Kuen arrived in Quang Ninh from Hong Kong and came to the office of Vu Hai Co., Ltd in Mong Cai town to collect the two containers. However, because they didn’t bring any paper to prove their ownership, the company refused to hand over the containers.

By May 8, 2008, Lu and his accomplices, including Chan Kwok Kwong, Wang Hui Lan, Ngan Chiu Kuen, returned to Vietnam . Four days later, they were arrested while receiving the containers at the Vu Hai Co., Ltd. Nearly 8,000 kg of marijuana, over 19,700 pairs of jeans and over HKD1 million were seized on the scene.

During their two visits to Vietnam , the five illegally brought a total of HKD 1.1 million HKD and US$ 20,000 from Hong Kong into Vietnam without declaration at the customs.

Vietnam sentences Chinese woman to death -

HANOI, Vietnam: A Chinese woman convicted of leading a major counterfeiting ring in Vietnam has been sentenced to death, a judge said Wednesday.
Guo Jin Hua, 65, of Guangxi province in southern China, was convicted of transporting and circulating fake Vietnamese dong worth US$285,000 at the end of a ten-day trial Tuesday in Tien Giang province, judge Tran Ngoc Quang said.
Along with Guo, a Vietnamese accomplice was sentenced to life in prison and 35 others were given jail terms from two years to 23 years on the same charges, he said.
Guo told the court that the counterfeit money was made in Taiwan and transported to Vietnam via China.
The ring was uncovered in June last year after operating for nearly two years.
Few foreigners have been sentenced to death in Vietnam, where about 100 people each year get the death penalty, many for drug-related offenses.

Hunt for ecstasy drug ingredient destroying Cambodia's jungles

Phnom Penh - Clubbers may claim it is the ultimate love drug, but conservationists Friday warned every tablet of MDMA, known as ecstasy, helps destroy Cambodia's already dwindling rainforest.
In a highly publicized burn earlier this month, Cambodia destroyed enough confiscated sassafras oil, a key ingredient in the illegal drug, to produce 245 million ecstasy tablets with a street value of approximately 7 billion dollars.
But conservation group Flora and Fauna International (FFI), which has been a key instigator in cracking down on the trade, said in a press release received Friday the drug's users may still not understand the serious damage their habit did to the environment.
'Sassafras oil, produced by boiling the roots of rare Mreah Prew Phnom trees, is illegally distilled in (Cambodian) jungles ... for processing into a chemical used to make ecstasy,' the group said.
'To make matters worse, the distillation process itself uses enormous quantities of fuel wood from other rainforest trees.'
As well, FFI said, sassafras oil processing plants are typically located beside streams, polluting the pristine water sources of the protected Cardamom mountains in the country's south-west.
The Mreah Prew Phnom tree (cinnamomum parthenoxylon) is a rare tree rated as data deficient by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.
FFI said it supports 49 wildlife officers to root out illegal factories and would continue its efforts to keep them from reopening.
It said the Cardamoms cover over 2-million hectares, and its destruction would potentially release 1.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide - a serious blow in the fight against climate change.