Under the supervision of the Dean of the College of Pharmacy, Associate Professor Dr. Sarmed H. Kathum Alkhateeb, the Clinical Pharmacy Department, in cooperation with the Student Activities Unit, and the Supporting Committee for Volunteer Work at the University of Baghdad/College of Pharmacy, organized an extracurricular awareness event at Al-Qishla Castle on Al-Mutanabbi Street in central Baghdad entitled “Are antibiotics dangerous? Are herbal supplements beneficial?”A group of students from the fourth stage participated in the event under the supervision of Assistant Professor Dr. Ali Azeez Ali and Assistant Professor Dr. Diaa Jabbar Kathum at the Clinical Pharmacy Department on Friday, February 16, 2024. The event included meetings with groups of people present and cultural seminars and the cultural circles present in Al-Qishla and educating them about the harms of the wrong uses of antibiotics as well as the wrong uses of nutritional supplements, especially those promoted through social media platforms. The students and their supervisors stressed the danger of the wrong and unnecessary use of antibiotics because this will cause the emergence of strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, thus losing the effectiveness of the available antibiotics that the patients need for serious infections and during the patient’s hospitalization. They also stressed that antibiotics should not be used without consulting health specialists and are not used for cases of cold and viral infections. The event addressed awareness about the wrong use of some nutritional supplements, especially by athletes in sports halls, such as proteins and hormones. An important point was emphasized, which is that nutritional and herbal supplements should not be a substitute for chronic disease medications such as diabetes and high blood pressure medications, which must be taken by prescription and regularly and not stopped by patients without consulting their doctor. This event comes within the college’s program to develop students’ skills in terms of spreading health awareness to the general public, as well as strengthening their abilities to communicate with people and deliver their messages in a simple language understood by the simple citizen. This event is the first of its kind for college students to participate in a public place in central Baghdad visited by a large number of people, especially on Fridays, and it opens the door to future awareness activities, hopefully.
