Antibiotic Consumption On the Rise Globally, Research Indicates

Analysis of pharmaceutical sales data from 67 countries “indicates that antibiotic consumption has risen by more than 20% globally since 2016 but would likely have been much higher had the COVID-19 pandemic not occurred.” CIDRAP has the news.

Total antibiotic consumption rose from 29.5 to 34.3 billion defined daily doses from 2016 to 2023 in countries with available data. This increase is lower than the one observed between 2008 and 2015, but that is in part because there were “significant declines in outpatient antibiotic use during the first year of the pandemic.”

The analysis found that antibiotic consumption “varied by countries’ economic status.” For instance, from 2016 through 2019, “antibiotic consumption increased in the 28 lower-middle– and upper-middle–incomes countries (LMICs and UMICs) by 9.8% and decreased in the 39 HICs by 5.8%.” Antibiotic consumption rate actually decreased by 4.9% in HICs over the study period.

These findings are in line with previous research suggesting that “prepandemic increases in global antibiotic consumption were being driven by LMICs that were growing economically. That's because in many of these countries, despite limited access to some antibiotics, indiscriminate antibiotic use is a significant issue. The problem is exacerbated by weak healthcare systems and the spread of illnesses that are attributable to lack of clean water, sanitation, and hygiene.”

When projecting out to 2030, the researchers estimated that “global antibiotic consumption would rise by 52.3%,” driven largely by countries with lower incomes. They suggest that “improvements in sanitation and hygiene, along with increasing use of vaccines and point-of-care diagnostics, could…help reduce the need for antibiotics in these countries.”