Antimicrobial stewardship and oxazolidinones use, a consideration for a Zambian health system

Abstract

Antimicrobial stewardship is the organized and systematic way of educating and enforcing evidence-based prescribing of antimicrobial agents to control misuse and overuse of antibiotics with the aim of curbing antimicrobial resistance. There is need to initiate antimicrobial stewardship program at various levels in the health sector such as health facilities or hospitals in order to safeguard and sustain the current antimicrobial agents in use. In addition, oxazolidinones are potent drugs in management of multidrug resistance (MDR) related infections and linezolid is already on the market and being considered as a drug of 'last resort' for the treatment of MDR bacterial infections. Therefore, to avert the development and rapid spread of drug resistance against linezolid and other oxazolidinone drugs, antimicrobial stewardship program needs to be established for critical monitoring and regulation of their use at all critical levels in the health system hierarchy, especially in resource limited countries.

Keywords: Oxazolidinone, Linezolid, Antimicrobial stewardship, antimicrobial resistance, Antibiotics, Zambia