Teen drug abuse has wider impact

Antibiotics, any doctor will tell you, are powerful drugs. They are also indiscriminate, killing all bacteria they encounter, even those that are beneficial to health. For that reason, they are intended to be used sparingly and only under medical supervision. That makes the revelation, reported in The National yesterday, that children in the UAE as young as seven are "self-medicating" by taking prescription drugs without medical supervision extremely worrying.

The UAE in general does have a tendency to overmedicate: rare is the visit to a doctor’s office or pharmacy that does not result in drugs being offered. Children are naturally exposed to that culture if they see their parents taking pills easily, and copy the behaviour. According to a study, children with symptoms such as headaches or flu will take powerful prescription medication from their parents’ medicine cabinets.

But children’s bodies are not fully developed and cannot cope with adult doses. It is also concerning that, as the study from Gulf Medical University in Ajman revealed, some children are obtaining the medications illegally, buying them from pharmacies without prescription.

Any medication can be harmful if misused, but misusing antibiotics in particular has a serious long-term impact. For individuals – and especially children, whose immune systems are still developing – it also kills useful bacteria, weakening the body in the long-run. There is also an impact on the society at large. Bacteria is spread from person to person and the overuse of antibiotics is one of the reasons why strains of bacterial infection are increasingly resistant to even the strongest antibiotics.

There are three strands to this. The easiest is the legal route, clamping down on pharmacies dispensing controlled medication without a licence. The second is parental supervision, making sure that children are not taking medications without their knowledge, and warning children to come to their parents and doctors with symptoms. And finally there is the vital role of education, for children and schools, but also for parents, warning them of the dangers to their child’s health of powerful medications.

Because so many medications are dispensed by neighbourhood pharmacies and taken in the privacy of the home, there is a false sense of security attached to what are, in the end, powerful chemicals that should only be administered under medical supervision.