In a renewed effort to combat the rising global threat of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has limited Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) in antibiotic formulations.

This was announced during a two-day stakeholders’ workshop to mark the 2024 World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) held in collaboration with the Danish Embassy in Lagos.

NAFDAC Director-General, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, emphasised the alarming rise of AMR, describing it as a silent pandemic threatening a decade of medical progress. She highlighted a particular trend; resistance to antimicrobial treatments observed in newborns at a teaching hospital in Nigeria.

“AMR is not a distant threat; it is already impacting lives, endangering the effectiveness of surgeries, medical procedures, and the treatment of common infections,” she warned.

She identified factors contributing to AMR, including the misuse and abuse of microbial agents, as well as the proliferation of substandard and falsified medical products.

She added that infections once easily treatable with antimicrobials are now becoming increasingly resistant, posing grave risks to human, animal, and environmental health.

To this, the agency has introduced targeted measures and has directed that antibiotics should contain no more than two active pharmaceutical ingredients to minimise excessive usage and slow the development of resistance.

The agency’s new directive discourages the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock production while urging farmers to adopt alternatives like organic acids, enzymes, probiotics, and prebiotics to reduce sub-lethal antibiotic doses that foster resistance.

In line with the reclassification of Colistin by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the DG raised concerns over the use of colistin in poultry and swine feed and noted that NAFDAC has intensified efforts to educate farmers on safer alternatives to preserve colistin’s efficacy for human healthcare.

Originally used as a coccidiostat, WHO now classifies colistin as a last-resort treatment for multidrug-resistant infections in humans.

The agency also called on stakeholders in animal feed production to replace antibiotics with organic acids to prevent mould growth.