This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Antibiotic prescriptions increased in Belgium despite public campaign
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
BOSTON — Prescriptions for antibiotics in Belgium increased despite years of public campaigns aimed at reducing the inappropriate use of antibiotics in order to fight resistance.
Beginning in 2000, the campaigns targeted the public with messages urging less use of antibiotics in a country that ranked among the highest consumers of the drugs, according to Paul M. Tulkens, MD, PhD, MSc, of the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium.
Paul M. Tulkens
“Public campaigns are interesting and may be useful to curb prescriptions of antibiotics, but there is so far little demonstration of important and long-lasting effect on the public use of antibiotics,” Tulkens said during a presentation at ASM Microbe.
In Belgium, where antibiotic prescriptions are reimbursed by the government if delivered by a pharmacist, Tulkens and colleagues obtained yearly statistics on those reimbursements from the National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance. These data were used to calculate defined daily doses (DDD) — the most current metric for comparing drug usage between countries — which are used to analyze the impact of drug pressure on resistance.
From 2001 to 2013, the total consumption of systemic anti-infectives in Belgium rose from 26.6 DDDs per 10,000 inhabitants per day to 33.2 DDDs per 10,000 inhabitants per day, according to Tulkens and colleagues — a 1.24-fold increase they found was driven mostly by the expanded use of beta-lactams. Meanwhile, they found no specific effect on the use of quinolones compared with global trends.
Tulkens admitted that using DDDs is an imperfect way to gauge antibiotic use, but said other metrics such as number of packages — the sizes of which are determined by the industry — “also have some problems.”
He said he is disappointed by the results of the campaigns, which he helped launch in 2000. Among their shortcomings, he said the campaigns target people who are in good health — thus not in need of antibiotics — rather than those who may be sick.
“If we do not address the questions in the campaigns,” Tulkens said, “it will be extremely difficult to change the behavior.” – by Gerard Gallagher
Reference:
Tulkens PM, et al. Do public campaigns decrease antibiotic prescription in the community? Evidence from a 12-year reimbursement data survey in Belgium. Presented at: ASM Microbe; June 16-20, 2016; Boston.
Disclosure: Tulkens reports no relevant financial disclosures.