Antibiotic resistance is a significant global concern, worsened in Bangladesh because antibiotics are widely available without a prescription. IUBAT nursing grad Ariful Haque Tutul and colleagues recently published a paper on unprescribed antibiotic use in the journal of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. They found that prevalence of antibiotic administration without prescription was over 37% among survey participants. “Our study revealed significant gaps in the participants’ fundamental knowledge … regarding the administration of antibiotics, including antibiotic identification, disease types, and the ability to differentiate antibiotic-treatable diseases from those that would not respond to antibiotics.” Survey participants were all urban dwellers, but the study found significant differences in various regions of the country.
