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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  What is antibiotic resistance?
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What is antibiotic resistance?

World Health Organization conducted a multi-country survey to assess people's understanding of antibiotic resistance

Nearly half the people surveyed think antibiotic resistance is only a problem for people who take antibiotics regularly, when actually anyone can develop antibiotic resistance. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/MintPremium
Nearly half the people surveyed think antibiotic resistance is only a problem for people who take antibiotics regularly, when actually anyone can develop antibiotic resistance. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint

We’ve all been reading about the growing threat of antibiotic resistance to public health across the world, but how much does the general public really know about it? The World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a multi-country survey to assess people’s understanding of antibiotic resistance.

The survey found some of the practices, gaps in understanding and misconceptions which magnify the problem. Here are the misconceptions WHO found after surveying nearly 10,000 respondents:

Overall

•About 76% of the respondents think that antibiotic resistance is a result of the body becoming resistant to antibiotics. In fact bacteria—not humans or animals—become resistant to antibiotics and their spread causes infections that are challenging to treat.

•Nearly 66% believe individuals are not at risk of a drug-resistant infection if they take their prescribed antibiotics.

Nearly half the people surveyed think antibiotic resistance is only a problem for people who take antibiotics regularly, when actually anyone can develop antibiotic resistance.

India

(1,023 online interviews)

•Around 76% said they had taken antibiotics within the past six months; 90% said they were prescribed or provided the drugs by a doctor or nurse.

•Around 75% think that antibiotics treat colds and flu, which is not correct, according to WHO; and just a little more than half the respondents know that they should complete the full course of antibiotics.

There were around 450,000 new multidrug resistant or MDR-TB cases in 2012 globally, about half of which were in India, China and the Russian Federation. As a result of antibiotic resistance, infections cannot be treated by first-line antibiotics, resulting in more expensive and longer treatments, hence increasing the economic burden of diseases.

“The rise of antibiotic resistance is a global health crisis, and governments now recognize it as one of the greatest challenges for public health today. It is reaching dangerously high levels in all parts of the world," Margaret Chan, WHO director general, said in a press release. “Antibiotic resistance is compromising our ability to treat infectious diseases and undermining many advances in medicine."

The survey was conducted in 12 countries—Barbados, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, the Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Sudan and Vietnam.

In a report in 2014, WHO said that the problem (of antibiotic-resistance) is so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine.

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Published: 17 Nov 2015, 12:35 AM IST
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