The Agriculture Ministry has prepared a strategic plan and road map to mitigate the impact of antimicrobial resistance on livestock and humans in collaboration with other stakeholders, Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo has informed.
At the opening of a meeting on the handling of antimicrobial resistance here on Wednesday, he said that Indonesia has issued a number of regulations on the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry, such as Law Number 18 of 2009, which prohibits the use of antibiotics as food additives.
The ministry has also prohibited the use of Colistin for livestock through the Decree of Agriculture Minister Number 9736 of 2000 as the medicine is used as an antibiotic to treat people.
However, the drug is a last resort to cure infectious diseases caused by bacteria, he noted.
The mitigation of antimicrobial resistance has been mandated by Presidential Instruction Number 4 of 2019 concerning capacity building in terms of prevention, detection, and response to global pandemic outbreaks as well as nuclear, biological, and chemical emergencies, he informed.
In recent decades, several countries have reported that antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat to the sustainability of food security and it is increasing slowly with the faster discovery of new antimicrobial drugs.
A Global Review report released in 2016 predicted that antimicrobial resistance will become the biggest cause of death in the world by 2050, with the mortality rate reaching 10 million people per year and the Asian region experiencing the highest rate, the minister noted.
“The scenario may occur if the international community does not implement concrete attempts to control the use of antimicrobials,” he added.
The meeting on antimicrobial resistance was a side event of the 3rd 2022 G20 Health Working Group (HWG) Meeting, held in Bali from August 22–24, 2022. The side event was attended by Deputy Minister of Health, Dante Saksono Harbuwono, along with a number of microbial experts and academics.
Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar, and assistant director general for antimicrobial resistance at the World Health Organization (WHO), Hannan Balkhy, joined the meeting via virtual means.
Source: Antara News