The lecture entitled Beyond Superbugs: Critical Lessons in Life and Medicine, from Africa to the First World, will be presented by Professor Mervyn Mer, Principal Specialist in the Division of Critical Care and Pulmonology, Department of Medicine at Wits University and Professor Jeffrey Lipman, a past Wits Medical School graduate who is based in Australia where he is the Head of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care at the University of Queensland School of Medicine and director of the Department of Intensive Care Medicine at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.
The two experts presented to media prior to the conference, and provided a general explanation of their research endeavours, which aims to address the general concern that doctors have worldwide with regards to the growing resistance of bacteria known as ‘superbugs’ to all antibiotics.
Prof. Lipman stated that in his research of patients in intensive care units, the preliminary evidence indicates that critically-ill patients need to be provided with different dosages of treatment, currently not practiced conventionally by doctors, in order to prevent their infections from becoming drug resistant.
“If you under treat critically-ill patients with drugs, the organisms will become resistant” said Lipman. He stated that this was the case for all bacterial bugs, not just tuberculosis.
Dr. Mer further elaborated that in South Africa, tuberculosis and HIV are the two most persistent ‘superbugs’ that are of major general health concern. He pointed out that in general, most pharmaceutical companies are not producing new antibiotics and therefore it was imperative that the medical fraternity preserve and prolong the usage of current antibiotics.
The two experts will co-operate through their respective faculties to extend research on this topic. Prof. Lipman in Australia runs the best intensive care ward for antibiotic administration which allows him to measure and adjust the drug dosages accordingly. “We don’t have this capacity in South Africa. Based on this, we can look at the tuberculosis drugs we use and [decipher] whether, as with antibiotics, we should be giving higher doses to critically-ill patients. If we can demonstrate [this] than we can save hundreds of thousands of lives” said Mer.
