73% of antibiotics globally are used for livestock production, not for human use, and yet we tend to only hear about how humans need to cut back. How about we require ranchers to decrease their animal density so they don't need to use so many antibiotics?<p><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/resources/us-livestock-industries-persist-high-intensity-antibiotic-use#:~:text=An%20estimated%2073%20percent%20of,have%20repeatedly%20found%20that%20the" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nrdc.org/resources/us-livestock-industries-persi...</a>
As an Australian originally, this article is pretty hard to take seriously. I have a great many problems with Australia's medical system, especially the GPs-then-hospitals-with-nothing-in-between idea, but overprescribing drugs has not been one of them. If anything it's been the opposite, it's ridiculously hard to get anything out of a doctor there, especially antibiotics and double especially anything that could conceivably be abused in some way.<p>The experience overseas is so much more loose that I wonder what the author is on, no pun intended. In Indonesia the health care system was so broken that I actually became kind of a low level expert in antibiotics myself, and would regularly self-diagnose and "prescribe" myself whatever, which I could just walk into any pharmacy, demand, and get. In Thailand it's a little stricter but not much.<p>So with two much larger countries right nearby with much laxer rules it's hard for me to take seriously the notion that tiny, isolated Australia's moderately bad GP habits, if that is even true, is having much of an effect on anything.
I found this to be pretty true while Living in Australia. I was always surprised at how cavalier doctors were about giving these out. I think it stems from two things - one is what they quoted in the article, that there's a "cultural expectation in Australia that there’s a pill or a tablet for every problem". People who go to the doctor expect a solution.<p>I suspect the other thing is how often Australians go to the doctor. Americans tend to be pretty hesitant to see doctors due to pricing of health care. In Australia, if you're sick, you go to the doctor. This is true even for common colds. Some stats, in 2010 Americans saw the doctor on average around 3.9 times a year (and this number is on a downward trend from the previous survey)[0]. In Australia this number is a bit harder to break down. Some politicians have cited that on average people see a doctor 11 times a year. Medicare stats breakdowns put that number at somewhere closer to 7[1]. Either way, it's a significant increase in comparison to Americans. It's more common to go see the doctor.<p>Unfortunately the article doesn't cite their sources here. One thing I'd be very curious about is <i>what percentage of doctor visits result in antibiotics</i> when comparing Australia vs the United States. My hypothesis is that despite cultural pressures, it may actually be that prescription rates per visit are quite similar between the two countries, and it's just that Australians seen the doctor more often.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/health_care_insurance/cb12-185.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/health_car...</a>
[1] <a href="https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/medicare-benefits-scheme-bulk-billing-net-statistics-1-july-2010-30-june-2011.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/doc...</a>
I'm from the Netherlands and once visited our Brazil office.<p>One of my colleagues there seemed to be having a pretty bad cold so he exited our meeting. One hour later he was back, said he took antibiotics, and felt fine now.<p>My jaw dropped. Dutch doctors are the opposite, as expats commonly complain about. Our first method of treatment (for various symptoms) is to send you back home and sit it out for a few days. Or just take some aspirins.<p>The idea being that your body will heal itself over various ills, and that this is the preferred way.<p>My mind was also blown when I heard that in many countries, people have medical cabinets at home. It being common that the typical non-senior adult has a stock with a wide array of medicines.<p>I was raised on zero medicines, unless there's something critically wrong. Even taking an aspirin makes you a bit of a wimp.<p>Cultural differences I guess.
1/3 of the population in <i>one year</i>? That's insane. I've only taken antibiotics once in my entire life, and can count on my fingers the amount of times someone mentioned taking them in the last decade. Are doctors prescribing antibiotics for the flu?
I have probably only been to the GP once or twice in my life... but that changed after having two kids.<p>I believe some of this can be tied to the very rapidly changing demographics in Australia. I have no data to back this up, but I do see quite often amongst parents that they will shop around for a GP that gives them antibiotics because back *home*, that's what they were expected to do.<p>So it is not uncommon for people to drive 30 minutes to their favourite GP somewhere to get exactly what they want...
Just some more anecdata, but it depends which GP practice you go to.<p>There's a GP practice near us that pays really poorly, always young doctors, they never last more than a year, and the owner (an older GP who also works there) just wants happy return customers who are in-and-out. So yeah, they'll prescribe whatever.<p>There's a better GP practice near me which won't actually do that though, most visits take the full 15 mins, they'll ask loads of questions and give you some tests and/or recommend over the counter stuff, and it's always "come back if it gets worse or doesn't get better by X". They charge for the first consult, but typically just bulk-bill for every visit related to that problem. Even chronic issues they typically bulk-bill.<p>So yeah, quality varies. it'd be interesting to see some stats around what sort of GP practices prescribe the most antibiotics - Total visits per year, average doctor turnover, etc etc.
In my life, I declined or threw away roughly 50% of officially recommended antibiotics prescriptions from doctors and hospitals. Worst was the first doctor I visited regularily after moving out from my childhood home. Whenever I came to him with any sort of flu to get the necessary papers for staying away from work for a few days, he prescribed antibiotics for the slightest cough I might have. I played along for two or three iterations, until I noticed my overall health would actually get worse from taking antibiotics. So I started to simply drop his prescriptions into the bin, and go back to drinking tea and eating fruits to get better. I had similar experiences with other doctors later. Our health system is such that you can actually make your health worse if you always listen to everything your doctors say. Sad, but unfortunately true. This is in part because people are not willing to ride out an infection at home. They expect from their doc to give them something magicaal which at least shortens their recovery time down to a day or two at most. And doctors, having learnt that their customers are expecting this, basically force feed the remedies to everyone. These days, you have to explicitly declare that you'd prefer to get better mostly on your own...
I can confirm, they hand it out at the doctors in Australia for almost anything. I used to get sinus infections more than twice a year and they would give me antibiotics without testing if it was bacterial of viral. I started to refuse them few years ago and start to use salt water rinse which worked way better
Oi, get staphed ya mutt!<p>Father was a vet, and he made me respect antibiotics. Including, IF you take them THEN finish the entire course as directed. DO NOT stop taking them because you feel better.<p>I think we gotta normalize being sick, and sitting at home watching Netflix.
Apart from the other observations in this thread I wonder if part of the issue is the work culture here. If you call in sick there is often an expectation or requirement that you will go to the GP to get a medical certificate to "prove" you're sick, and having a "cold" isn't typically an acceptable reason for not showing up for work.<p>I haven't had to worry about this in years but while working in retail I periodically found myself at a GP and being prescribed antibiotics when I would have otherwise stayed home to rest, if I didn't need that medical certificate.
Bollocks, there's about seven of us, we're not going to drive anything. And we don't feed them to otherwise-healthy livestock, unlike some other countries.
How do you breed antibiotic resistant gonorrhea without giving antibiotics to someone with gonorrhea? Giving someone a mild dose to treat some other infection, but not enough to properly treat the gonorrhea?<p>I think if we are serious about antibiotic use in humans, we need to test for pathogens before or during treatment. Is there a mechanism to affordably do a broad spectrum screening of infections?
I don't understand this - I haven't had antibiotics since I was a young child. What is the average case we're talking about here? Most colds I've had go away in 3-5 days max. Old and vulnerable people with infections, I get, but no reason anyone under the age of 40 should be taking any unless very serious case.
That's right MSM, blame individuals, not Australian or global doctors or pharmacies. And definitely don't mention meat global agriculture for abusing antibiotics to grow animals faster while also making them less effective by evolving pathogens as well.
What if it wasn’t antibiotics alone but the use of some pesticide that is interacting with them and the immune system and bacteria to make this more likely?<p>Is the rate of resistance formation, the same as what you would expect from looking at other countries with the same usage profile of antibiotics? Have all other variables been controlled for?
I had a chest infection lasting months from mid-june to mid-October, and despite a run of Moxy, then Augmentin, then Roxy, and finally Cefalexin, nothing worked. Out of options, I tried a friend's suggestion: raw garlic and honey. After three weeks, my symptoms and long COVID issues improved. It was a stubborn infection that caused me to over-relying on antibiotics, as the article suggests. Makes me wonder about GP's exploring alternatives, especially with rising drug resistance.