India Largest Consumer of Antibiotics in The World

But that use is not being effectively monitored by health officials, from doctors to hospital workers to clinicians, noted the researchers. Consequently, antibiotic use is both rampant and less targeted.

That reality is driving antibiotic resistance at an unprecedented rate, researchers said.

"We have to remember that before we had antibiotics, it was pretty easy to die of a bacterial infection," said Ramanan Laxminarayan, a research scholar with the Princeton Environmental Institute.

"And we're choosing to go back into a world where you won't necessarily get better from a bacterial infection. It's not happening at a mass scale, but we're starting to see the beginning of when the antibiotics are not working as well," Laxminarayan said.

The study found that India was the single-largest consumer of antibiotics in the world in 2010, followed by China and the U.S.

The study also found that antibiotic consumption has flattened in the US, compared with the five BRICS countries.

But U.S. citizens per capita still account for far more antibiotic consumption than any other population, with a rate of more than twice that of India.

The study noted that antibiotic use tended to peak at different times of the year, corresponding in almost every case with the onset of the flu season.

The finding was published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

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