On the 19th of November 2020, Prof. Abdelraouf ElManama, professor of Microbial Science at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Islamic University of Gaza, did contribute with a scientific paper into an international symposium, entitled “The COVID19 Pandemic: (Malaysia-Palestine)”, which was held in participation and organization of the National University of Malaysia and the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The symposium was chiefly throwing the lights on the Palestinian and Malaysian experience whilst the COVID19 took place in the counties. The symposium was such a wide space of discussion and confabulation for exchanging the bilateral experience, in which El-Manama presented a scientific paper on how to take advantage of current efforts to combat any future epidemics; additionally, he concentrated on the approach of addressing the most prominent issue, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, which he considered a challenge that may outweigh the challenge of the current pandemic, COVID19.
In a related context, Prof. Al-Manama took part in the virtual one-way health conference held by the April Foundation for Awareness in Libya on the 24th of November 2020, which was put under the title “One Hand to Preserve Antimicrobials”. This participation comes as part of the annual efforts of the Faculty of Health Sciences to raise awareness of antibiotics.
In this conference, prof. Abdelraouf displayed critical information through a paper highlighted the dilemma of the misuse of antibiotics during the Corona pandemic, explaining how the pandemic truly affects antibiotic supervision programs and increases the likelihood of the emergence of resistant strains of bacteria. In addition to that, through a renowned intervention, he addressed the use of antibiotics in the animal production sector and its direct negative and long-term effects on humans.
A number of recommendations ultimately the paper has contained. Most of them included how to maintain the effectiveness of antibiotics and slow the phenomenon of resistance in microbes through enactment of laws that would govern the prescription of antibiotics. Moreover, he focused on improving laboratory capabilities through raising the diagnostic capabilities and activating the surveillance programs.
