Contact: John Walls, [email protected]
Time to do some spring cleaning in your medicine cabinet
LUBBOCK -- Read a newspaper or watch the television and you may find your fears escalating about diseases such as the Ebola virus, dengue fever, hantavirus, cholera, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
The bigger problem, however, can be found in your bathroom cabinet.
David R. Smith, M.D., president of Texas Tech Medical Center, says too many people are taking improper antibiotics to fight off their maladies. As a result, a mutant generation of germs is emerging across America.
"The greatest problem we face is battling infectious diseases," Smith said. "We've waged the war on microbes, we just don't know who won it."
Some people don't use antibiotics as prescribed and some take antibiotics that have been in the cabinet for too long and are no longer effective. "Another problem we face is that people also may hoard medications," Smith said. "In fact, with such easy access to Mexico, many people cross the border and self prescribe themselves very powerful antibiotics."
If antibiotics are not appropriate, instead of dealing the bacteria a lethal blow, they will simply cause the bacteria to mutate. "We all carry bacteria, so we all are at risk if we resort to self-diagnosis and treatment," Smith said. "If you are not careful, your body can become a Petri dish for developing new and more powerful microbes."
The message this spring is to take a look in your medicine cabinet and do some cleaning. Only use antibiotics when prescribed by your physician or health practitioner. And always take the entire course of antibiotics because it often takes 10 to 14 days to effectively kill bacteria.
"This is a very real health concern," Smith said. "In the state of Texas, we still have the biblical diseases of plague, tuberculosis, leprosy and rabies. We have Texans who are in quarantine for tuberculosis. And those people are resistant to all five of our most formidable antibiotics. We have no hope for those people. We do not want to get in a similar situation with common bacteria such as streptococcus. The fact is we should have learned our lesson from tuberculosis."
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