Intensification in Antibiotic Consumption in Pakistan and Factors that Promote the use of Antibiotics: A Mini Literature Review

Abstract

Increase in antibiotic consumption is a serious threat for the antibiotic’s resistance. Antibiotic resistance is still a serious worldwide public health issue, and community pharmacies dispensing of antibiotics without a prescription is a key contributor. By using pharmacy interviews/ questionnaires and/or simulated patient approaches, the MEDLINE, PubMed, and EMBASE databases were utilized to search and locate studies reporting the dispensing of non-prescribed antibiotics in community pharmacies or drugstores that sell medications for human use and also retrieved the studies reporting the insetting use of antibiotics. Overall, in Pakistan, overprescribing of antibiotics, self-medication and without prescription dispensing of antibiotic is the main cause in the rise of antibiotic consumption which need a serious attention from the policy makers