SuperbugsAntibiotic Over-Prescribing for Kids in Poorer Nations
A new study has found that children in eight low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) receive a remarkably high number of antibiotics by the time they reach the age of 5. The study, which looked at data on sick children who attended healthcare facilities in Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, Namibia, Nepal, Tanzania, and Uganda over a 10-year period, found that the average number of antibiotic prescriptions written for children between birth and the age of 5 in these countries was 25.
A new study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases has found that children in eight low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) receive a remarkably high number of antibiotics by the time they reach the age of 5.
The study, which looked at data on sick children who attended healthcare facilities in Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, Namibia, Nepal, Tanzania, and Uganda over a 10-year period, found that the average number of antibiotic prescriptions written for children between birth and the age of 5 in these countries was 25.
Furthermore, although researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health weren’t able to directly assess whether the prescriptions were appropriate, they estimate that anywhere from half to 80 percent of them are likely unnecessary.
“Overall, the results of our study suggest that antibiotic exposure of children in LMICs is extremely high, and that antibiotics prescriptions are, to a large extent, issued inappropriately,” the authors of the study wrote. “Given there are more than 500 million children younger than 5 years in LMICs, the contribution of this population to global antibiotic consumption, and therefore to the selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, is substantial.”
Illness, Treatment Increase Antibiotic Exposure
CIDRAP reports that for their estimates, the researchers used data from two sources: the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and the Service Provision Assessment (SPA). The DHS, which collects nationally representative household-level data on the health of women and children, was used to estimate the cumulative number of illnesses in children related to fever or a cough in each country, as well as the cumulative number of visits to a healthcare facility for these illnesses. The SPA surveys, which collect clinical observation data from healthcare facilities, were used to estimate the proportion of children prescribed an antibiotic.
From SPA surveys, the researchers identified 22,519 clinical observations of children younger than 5 years who visited a healthcare facility because of an illness from July 2007 through December 2016. From DHS surveys, they identified 68,826 children younger than 5 years who visited a healthcare facility from May 2006 through November 2016. The SPA surveys indicated that 85.4 percent of healthcare facility visits were related to either a fever or cough, and that 62.7 percent of children who visited a healthcare clinic were prescribed an antibiotic.
