Antibiotics will not get rid of your cold
The first-ever European Antibiotic Awareness Day will take place across Europe on 18 November 2008. European Antibiotic Awareness Day will be an annually recurring event that will raise awareness about the risks associated with inappropriate use of antibiotics and how to take antibiotics responsibly. European Antibiotic Awareness Day will set focus specifically on the need for everybody to stop any unnecessary use of antibiotics.
European Antibiotic Awareness Day is a European health initiative in close collaboration with the World Health Organization, as well as many other relevant representative stakeholder groups such as health professionals and scientists. All public authorities, healthcare professionals, child care professionals and social workers as well as private organisations, families and individuals are encouraged to take part in the initiative and to launch their own activities or discussions on responsible use of antibiotics on European Antibiotic Awareness Day.
Tags: Antibiotics, Bacteria, Education, Health, Medicine, Microbiology, Science
Antibiotics = LIFE, but they are very expensive …
Many antibiotics are actually very cheap: good old penicillin; generic forms of some of the other more modern ones… If they are out of patent, the Indian and other (Thai, Brazilian) generic manufacturers ar emaking vast amounts of them for very low cost.
Unless you go to a private doctor who prescribes in-patent drugs, and to a pharmacy with an interest in maximising profit, there is little reason to pay very much for antibiotics.
The thing about antibiotics is some people don’t complete the whole course of treatment, causing the possibility of developing a drug-resistant viruses. It’s already happening, forcing scientists and doctors into using a combination of different antibiotics to combat super-mutated viruses.
Antibiotics certainly can not fight cold, which is virus mediated, but it can prevent “super-added infections” by opportunistic pathogens.