The Ministry of Health is advocating the use of antibiotics onprescription and strictly managing the sale of antibiotics at drugstores in efforts to curb the rampant use of these medicines.

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

Thesector will conduct more research on anti-bio resistant virus strainsand educational campaigns on the danger and measures to prevent drugresistant viruses on the media, he added.

The acting chiefrepresentative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Vietnam, GrahamHarrison said the theme of the World Health Day 2011 “Antimicrobialresistance: no action today, no cure tomorrow” aims to draw people’sattention to the increasing concern over antimicrobial resistance.

Toprevent the threat of antimicrobial resistance, WHO called on nationsto increase their supervision capability and microorganism tests, ensureconstant access to necessary medicine and regulate and promote logicaluse of medicine in animal breeding and for human, he said.

Accordingto WHO, 58 nations reported the existence of multidrug resistantTuberculosis (MDR-TB) in 2010. It is estimated that an additional440,000 people have MDR-TB worldwide and almost a third of them die eachyear.

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