Use of Antibiotics in Mongolia, Turkey and Iran is running at extraordinarily high rates, with Mongolians using the medicines most of all among nationalities surveyed, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Report on Surveillance of Antibiotic Consumption released on November 12.
The WHO, which says urgent action is needed to cut unnecessary consumption of the medicines, determined that while the Netherlands used 9.78 defined daily doses (DDD) per 1,000 people, Britain used twice as much and Turkey almost twice as much again, at 38.18 DDD per 1,000 inhabitants. Iran’s consumption was calculated as similar to Turkey’s, while Mongolia’s was recorded as the highest, at 64.41 DDD per 1,000 people.
Collecting the data is essential in fighting antimicrobial resistance, the extremely worrying trend of bacterial infections becoming immune to antibiotics, the report said.
“Findings from this report confirm the need to take urgent action, such as enforcing prescription-only policies, to reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics,” Suzanne Hill, director of the Department of Essential Medicines and Health Products at the WHO, said in a statement.
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