India’s Antibiotic intake has increased by 30 % over a decade: Report

According to the State of the World’s Antibiotic 2021 report which was released on Wednesday, the antibiotic utilization in India has surged highly with as much as 30 % increase over the last decade in terms of the per capita use. The increased antibiotic usage has raised the concerns adhering to widespread and grown resistance to drugs.

The change in the percentage of the total utilization from 2010 to 2020 accounts to around 48 per cent, as per the report presented by Washington-based Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP).

The rising concern is the usage of the antimicrobials for the animal health sector, in India as well as around the world. Considering the Indian scenario, the resistance rate adhering to ampicillin for the chicken been as high as 69.7 %, whereas the resistance rate for antibiotic therapy adhering to E.coli and Salmonella accounts to 16.5 %.

For 2020, according to statistics, the usage accounts to 2,160.02 tonnes, which will be elevated to 2,236.74 tonnes by 2030.

The report states, “China and India represented the largest hotspots of resistance, with new ones emerging in Brazil and Kenya.”

In a research conducted in 2013 by CDDEP and collaborators, it revealed about the global consumption of antimicrobials in food animals estimated to be 1131,109 tonnes and will be projected to reach 200,235 tonnes till 2030.

Ramanan Laxminarayan, CDDEP director said, “The main concern is that antibiotic consumption, particularly in the animal sector, is rising. This increases the risk of zoonotic infections that could cause epidemics in hospitals.”

The global consumption of antibiotics has elevated by 65 % during the period from 2000 to 2015, and the consumption rate has increased by 39%.

There is fast-paced resistance for the first line agents of antimicrobial therapy among the pathogens that trigger HIV, malaria, typhoid fever, threatening global progress of evading out infections.

Laxminarayan said, “If you compare with another large country like China, it is using less antibiotics per capita than India. Consequences of antimicrobial resistance for a country like India will be more detrimental as prescribing second and third line antibiotics for India will be more expensive.”

In the United States, over 35,000 deaths have been caused by an estimated 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections annually. Whereas in Canada, 5,400 deaths have been invoked by antimicrobial resistance determined in 2018.

Yatin Mehra, Chairman, Institute of Critical Care & Anesthesiology, Medanta hospital stated, “Most patients coming to us from small towns have already been put on stronger antibiotics. We are very careful with our choice of antibiotics, but most of these patients are already resistant to first or second line of drugs.”

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