Contributed by: Siddarth David and Dr. Tamhankar
Researchers at the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy
(CDDEP), Washington DC, released a report and an online interactive mapping tool, last week, that documenting rates of bacteria resistant to last-resort
antibiotics that can lead to life-threatening infections across the world. data
come from a variety of sources, from small private laboratories in India to
large datasets from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control,
covering 30 countries.
The executive summary of the State of the World's Antibiotics 2015,
states that between 2001-10 the global consumption of antibiotics rose by 30%
and in countries where they are sold over the counter like Brazil, India and
South Africa, they rose by a staggering 210%. It further states that though
wealthy countries still use far more antibiotics per capita, there are growing high
rates in the low- and middle-income countries where surveillance data is now
available—such as India, Kenya, and Vietnam.
The data also shows that antibiotic resistance is also rising
especially in in sub-Saharan Africa, India, Latin America, and Australia and
was recorded at 47% in India in 2014, and 90% in Latin American hospitals in
2013. The report should serve as wake up call to health policy makers to
implement guidelines on antibiotic stewardship and judicious use as succinctly
put by Ramanan Laxminarayan, CDDEP Director and report co-author "We need
to focus 80 percent of our global resources on stewardship and no more than 20
percent on drug development."
