A recent study raises concerns about the excessive use of antibiotics by Indians at a time when the discussion is raging over prescription Dolo-650 during the Covid-19 outbreak. According to research, India consumed more than 500 crore antibiotics in 2019, with azithromycin ranking as the top antibiotic molecule.
Details on How Many Antibiotic Tablets Are Consumed in India Each Year:
It claims that India’s high rate of antibiotic resistance is largely due to improper usage of antibiotics, according to a study published in the journal Lancet Regional Health Southeast Asia. Unrestricted over-the-counter sales of the majority of antibiotics complicate the availability and sale of medicine, according to the report.
“Even though India is the world’s largest consumer of antibiotics in terms of volume, the country lacks a formal system of antibiotic use surveillance to direct an antimicrobial stewardship program similar to those found in the US and Europe,” researchers wrote in the paper, noting that the most recent global surveillance report from 65 countries, which looked at antibiotic consumption for the year 2015, lacked data from India.
Data from PharmaTrac, a private-sector medicine sales dataset compiled from a panel of 9000 stockists across the nation, was analyzed by researchers from the Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, and Public Health Foundation of India. They discovered that there were 5071 million defined daily doses in total, or 10.4 DDDs per 1000 people each day.
Cefixime 200 mg tablet was the antibiotic that was most frequently consumed, followed by azithromycin 500.
Antibiotics are drugs that treat bacterial illnesses in humans and animals by either killing the bacteria or making it impossible for them to grow and reproduce, according to the US-based Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
