Zeitschrift für Bioäquivalenz und Bioverfügbarkeit

Abstrakt

Irrational Use of Antibiotics, in Different Age Groups of Karachi: A Wakeup Call for Antibiotic Resistance and Future Infections

Hameed A, Naveed S, Qamar F, Alam T, Abbas SS and Sharif N

Antibiotics also acknowledged as antibacterial medications that inhibits or slows down the growth of bacteria. From discovery of antibiotics, decade added to the life expectancy of man. Irrational use of antibiotics can lead to resistance towards wide range of pathogens and bacteria. The emergence of resistance is threatening the usefulness of antibiotics. There is a dearth of novel agents to encounter the challenge of resistant strains. Our study aims to find out the current practice of irrational antibiotics prescribed by physicians to children and use of antibiotics among adults without prescription or with refilling of prescriptions having antibiotics as a self-medication. A cross-sectional method was use to collect data from different hospitals (from 100 children) and public places (from 200 adults) of Karachi, Pakistan. According to our survey, antibiotics are prescribed to 76% children, although many children have no need of it. According to our survey report on 200 adults 19.5% use antibiotics often, 23% purchase antibiotic without prescriptions, 52.5% never seek advice from health care professionals, 17% adults not follow complete course of antibiotics, 26.5% experienced serious side effects from antibiotics, 41% don’t know that the misuse of antibiotic is harmful, while 27.5% thinks that the antibiotics they used will be effective in future for the same infection. 39% adults refills the previous prescription with antibiotics for the same infections they experienced in past whereas 25.5% adults share their prescription of antibiotic with others. We concluded that the major factor that leads to irrational use of antibiotic and its resistance is lack of awareness and improper prescription data by physicians.