MEDICAL treatment is an essential remedial measure whose application needs to be consistent with the latest trends for health personnel to successfully eradicate ailments.

In recent years, drug application in a number of illnesses has not been successful for various reasons, resulting in permanent impairement or even death.

In Zambia, malaria and tuberculosis (TB) are among illnesses that have developed resistance to drugs and in the end lives have been lost.

As the World Health Day was being commemorated yesterday, a strong message was sent out on the need for stakeholders to intensify national and global efforts towards combating antimicrobial resistance.

Drug resistance results in huge costs for a country in many ways such as expenses the Government has to expend in containing disease burden.

In case of deaths, there are so many inherent costs such as those relating to replacement of human resource on which the Government and families could have spent colossal sums of money to train.

Some of the diseases spread rapidly thereby infecting so many people who may not respond to drug treatment as a result of resistance.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), about 440,000 new cases of multi drug resistant TB are recorded annually causing at least 150,000 deaths.

Going by the WHO statistics, the trend needs urgent redress by among other interventions investing more in research and training.

Local and international medical institutions should network in research work to effectively redress the negative trend.

Training and retraining programmes should be undertaken to raise the bar among medical personnel at different levels.

Most importantly, proactive measures should be sustained so that Governments do not spend resources in reactionary undertakings.

Health Minister Kapembwa Simbao has rightly cited some of the causes such as over-prescribing of antibiotics in clinics and inappropriate use of drugs.

The task of dealing with challenges of drug resistance should not be left to the health personnel only.

This is a task which requires efforts from all around to successfully eradicate diseases as the country works towards attaining Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) on health by the year 2015.