White paper warns of antibiotic resistance

Six-fold rise in sale of second-line drugs in five years; also points at growing use of antibiotics on animals

The sale of carbapenems, a class of antibiotics on the World Health Organization’s watch list of second-line drugs, jumped six-fold between 2005 and 2010 in the country, says a recently released white paper on antibiotic resistance.

Carbapenems are antibiotics used to treat infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria and are widely used for patients who are hospitalised.

“There is a very evident misuse of antibiotics in the medical sector. This has resulted in the rise of healthcare expenditure and has also affected the outcome of treatment,” said Dr. Prashant K. Dash of the Indian Health Organisation, a healthcare aggregator that has many doctors under its umbrella.

The organisation is part of Aetna International, which has published the white paper collated with existing studies on antibiotic resistance. Dr. Dash said the IHO is monitoring antibiotic prescriptions by their physicians in terms of dosage, duration and rationale for usage.

Multiple factors

The white paper says India is among the world’s largest consumers of antibiotics for human health. Multiple factors, such as a high burden of disease, poor public health infrastructure, rising incomes and the unregulated sale of cheap antibiotics, have amplified the crisis of antimicrobial resistance in the country. Besides the use of antibiotics to treat humans, the paper also highlights the growing use of antibiotics on farm animals.

“In some countries, up to 80% of antibiotics may be used in agriculture, primarily to promote growth, not to treat disease. Thanks to natural selection, every application gives bacteria another chance to develop resistance,” it says.

The paper says that absolute data on the use of antibiotics in agriculture is hard to come by, but the WHO says animals receive well over half of all antibiotics. The paper cites a 2015 analysis by a group of scientists who studied antimicrobial use in agriculture and found that agriculture consumption of antimicrobial drugs was estimated to be 63,151 tons in 2010 and is expected to rise by two-thirds by 2030.