Bacterial resistance: vaccines beyond antibiotics

Antibiotics are medications that stop the growth of or kill bacteria inside and outside our bodies. They are very effective in fighting life-threatening bacterial infections .

However, their excessive and indiscriminate use has allowed many bacteria to become resistant to their action. This problem is worsening and requires attention, and one that, in our country, there has been no official will to address.

In the Dominican Republic, you can buy any antibiotic without a prescription, which is, among other things, the main factor in a public health problem that makes it difficult for doctors to cure infections that were previously easily treatable.

Recently, the Dominican Society of Infectious Diseases expressed its concern regarding the findings of the Institute for Innovation in Biotechnology and Industry, universities, and other partner institutions that, through advanced genomic analysis, detected the presence of " resistant bacteria " in important rivers in our country: Ozama, Isabela, Yaque del Norte, and Yaque del Sur.

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In the latter, bacteria such as Vibrio Cholerae , which causes cholera, and Salmonella, capable of causing serious intestinal infections and deaths, were identified ( Diario Salud. By Viannelys Alcántara, September 8, 2025 ).

We know and must recognize that vaccines , due to their action in preventing bacterial and viral diseases , are the best tool for avoiding many of the diseases to which people are exposed.

That vaccines save five lives every day and that between 3 and 3.5 million people are saved each year by timely vaccination.

And, due to anti-vaccine propaganda led by the U.S. Secretary of Health, this year alone in the Americas, 35 new outbreaks and more than 10,000 cases of measles have been reported, with their resulting pneumonia, encephalitis, and death.

A disease that was controlled worldwide thanks to vaccination.

Dominican doctors with a long history of practice, particularly pediatricians , remember the large number of children in the Emergency Departments and wards of our hospitals with meningitis, encephalitis, diphtheria, whooping cough, epiglottitis, tetanus, pneumonia, otitis media, and many other diseases who, before the expansion of the vaccination program, suffered from these infections and their consequences.

Thanks to vaccination, tragedies of that magnitude are no longer seen, and in doing so, we have contributed to controlling bacterial resistance . Because by vaccinating in a timely manner, we prevent many infections , making the use of antibiotics unnecessary. The rest is misinformation without support or medical evidence.

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