SHOULD MY CHILD HAVE AN ANTIBIOTIC?

Antibiotic medicines are of no use at all if you have a viral illness. Antibiotics, as the name suggests, are medicines that kill certain bacteria. The only way to determine for sure whether your illness is viral or bacterial is via a laboratory test (of blood or stools).

It’s possible to contract a secondary bacterial infection if you are struggling to get better from an existing cold or flu virus, or if you get a bacterial infection from somebody else who has a bacterial infection, “or if you are immune-compromised, such as if you are Hiv-positive, or have cancer or diabetes,” according to Dr Delecia Wood-thompson, an emergency medicine registrar at the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital.

Even if you do have a bacterial infection, your body might still fight it off on its own. So it is fair to say that we overuse antibiotics on a massive scale. This is understandable when you consider how desperate parents of sick children are for symptoms to be relieved – and that lab tests can take a few days to develop. By that time, you may be very tempted to administer the trusty bitter white syrup to your child, regardless of what is making him sick.

The problem is that bacteria are developing antibiotic resistance, and are no longer being killed off by our existing range of antibiotics. Socalled “superbugs” are outwitting our existing antibiotics in the “arms race” between medicine and bugs. This is a global health concern, with drug-resistant malaria and tuberculosis of particular concern in Africa, and it’s worth bearing in mind next time you want to ask your doctor for a prescription.