Minister sounds alarm on antibiotics overuse:’They’re thrown at the common cold’
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Newfoundland and Labrador’s health minister — whose province leads Canada and the U.S. for antibiotics overuse — is warning that drug resistance could bring a wave of deaths by infection.
John Haggie, a former surgeon, says he fears health care could be thrown back to the 1920s, an era before penicillin when pneumonia and other infections were among the most serious medical threats.
“They’re thrown at the common cold,” Haggie, who served as president of the Canadian Medical Association before entering politics, said of antibiotics.
“I know in surgical fields when I was still in practice, anybody with an open wound would end up with a prescription for multiple courses of antibiotics.”