Indians Consuming More Antibiotics than Ever: Study

The planed schedule had two parts. Part A categorized 16 drugs and antibiotics that would be sold directly by drug manufacturers to the tertiary care hospitals. Part B had 74 drugs with mandatory warning ‘It is dangerous to take this preparation except in accordance with the medical advice', and 'Not to be sold by retail without the prescription of the doctor'.

Another fact is that Indian consumption of carbapenems is lesser than Pakistan considering the per capita rate. Findings show that Indian consumption ratio in 2010 was 1.25 units per million population against the Pakistan ratio of 1.7.

 The CDDEP research also shows that growth of carbapenem consumption is much faster than in Pakistan. "Indian carbapenem consumption grew at more than twice the pace of Pakistan between 2005 and 2010: there was nearly a six-fold increase. In Pakistan, the same market grew 2.5 times, from 0.68 to 1.7 units per million populations. The data covers the retail pharmacy channels, estimated to account for 80 percent of the total pharmaceutical market in both India and Pakistan," CDDEP research analyst Nikolay Braykov said to TOI.

CDDEP says that the highly competitive domestic pharmaceutical industry has a role in the rapid growth of the antibiotic since they could find about 55 brand names of carbapenem antibiotics sold in Indian markets.

"This is a lot, considering carbapenems are a relatively new antibiotic class with only four drugs: meropenem (most popular in India), imipenem/cilastatin, ertapenem and doripenem (the newest and most expensive one). By comparison, there were only six product names in Pakistan and five in the U.S." Braykov added.

It is high time for government to check the overuse of these medicines. If the overuse continues no medicine will be able to save human kind from its surrender to diseases.