by Josephat Hema from Tanzania,

One day I was passing through some scientific journals I usually read some published scientific research reports from. Currently I have been studying mainly on Antimicrobial resistance topic because it was part of my bachelor thesis and I will hopefully do some researchs about it in my masters studies. I was suprised by the fact that Climate change which is perpetuated by environmental pollution is also a contributing factor to Antimicrobial resistance.

In short words, Antimicrobial resistance is a tendency whereby medicine fail to cure various infections because the disease-causing microorganisms(microbials) become stronger and hence resist the effects of medicines against them.

The research report said that environmental pollution and climate change cause a stress on the existing microbials such as bacteria in the ecosystem and make them develop some defensive mechanisms that in turn render them resistant to medicines´ effect against them.

 

This was very interesting to me.

 

Hence, as we keep on raising awareness on Climate Change issue and seek for Climate Justice we also, coincidentally seek to slow down the rate at which microbials become resitant against our life saving medicines.

But currently the most contributing factor of Antimicrobial resistance has been reported to be irrational use of the Anitimicrobials and for this case the most irrationally used Antimicrobials being Antibiotics. Since many people have been using them without medical consultations and some people never use all of them required dose. These are some of the common habits that contribute to making the microbials resistant to the Antimicrobials.

 

As I attendend a seminar on volunteering  service in Berlin back in October last year, I met a journalist from Deutsche Welle broadcasting corporation and he was interested in the Community awareness project on Antimicrobial Resistance that I do with my friends in Tanzania. He, later on interviewed me in Swahili language and recorded the interview which was later on aired in DW Swahili program for Swahili speaking countries (link for the interwiew https://www.dw.com/sw/kwanini-usugu-wa-dawa-unaongezeka/av-52119814 ).

 

I was so happy to speak about our innovative project which is called Jamii Medical Awareness (Jamii is Swahili for Society) and the campaign called Tabasamu la Tiba Sahihi (The smile of proper treatment) which uses Animation to spread the awareness of Antimicrobial resistance to the local community (link for the Animation,in Swahili language also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA0ZDtXqO2o&t=11s ). Our project was one among best 10 projects out of 358 which competed for the innovation competition on Health issues approaches.

 

As I was thinking on the scaring statistics on the effect of Antimicrobial on people´s life and the global economy I was pondering as to why it is still not given the attention it deserves.

Gladly that the World is becoming more aware on the Climate Change issue and people become more Optimistic on achieving the so called Climate Justice.

 

Maybe it is the time now we should also take a serious look on Antimicrobial resistance and take some collective steps.

What do you think?