Over half of antibiotics India uses belong to ‘watch’ group, highest globally | Data

In the Data Point published last week (“Over 38% patients on more than one antibiotic”, January 17), results from a government survey showed that an overwhelming number of inpatients are prescribed antibiotics by hospitals across India. Findings also showed that many patients were on more than one antibiotic. Further, the data showed that over 55% of such antibiotic prescriptions belonged to the “Watch” group as classified by the World Health Organization (WHO), i.e., medicines reserved for only severe infections.

Data show that resistance among Indian patients to certain types of antibiotics is among the highest in the world. In India, for many antibiotic-bacterium combinations, over 75% of infections were from resistant bacteria. For instance, in the ceftriaxone antibiotic-Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria combination, over 87.4% of infections were from resistant bacteria as shown in Table 1. 

Table 1 | The table lists the antibiotic-bacterium combinations, the broader antibiotic group these drugs belong to and the best and the worst countries in terms of resistance to various antibiotic-bacterium combinations. For instance, the ceftriaxone antibiotic belongs to the group called third-generation cephalosporins.