About a third of people surveyed in the Western Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia have used antibiotics in the last year without a prescription, according to the results of a survey published last week in Frontiers in Public Health. The finding highlights major gaps in public knowledge about antimicrobial resistance (AMR), as well as an urgent need to raise awareness about the consequences of misusing and overusing antibiotics.
The 8221 respondents to the survey were from the capital cities of Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro, North Macedonia, the Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan, Türkiye, and Uzbekistan.
They said they took antibiotics to treat colds (24%), sore throat (21%), cough (18%), and flu-like symptoms (16%), most of which are caused by viruses and against which antibiotics are ineffective.
Of all the respondents, 50% believed that the statement "antibiotics are effective against colds" is true, while just 36% correctly said it is false. Another 43% incorrectly believed that "antibiotics kill viruses," while 39% correctly said it is false.
AMR Should Be Household Word
"A lot of people don’t know what antimicrobial resistance is, and the word antimicrobial spans many kinds of medicines, [including] antivirals and antifungals," co-author Danilo Lo Fo Wong, regional advisor control of AMR for the WHO Regional Office for Europe, told
