Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20305

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Kunin CM, Lipton HL, Tupasi T, Sacks T, Scheckler WE, Jivani A, Goic A, Martin RR, Guerrant RL, Thamlikitkul V.
Social, behavioral, and practical factors affecting antibiotic use worldwide: report of Task Force 4.
Rev Infect Dis 1987; 9:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3299647

Abstract:

In addressing its charge from the General Chairperson of this study, Task Force 4 decided to direct special attention to antibiotic use in developing nations because of the critical importance of the disease burden of bacterial infections in these regions of the world. The task force recognized the impact of respiratory and diarrheal diseases on morbidity and mortality among young children in developing nations. Another major concern was the potential for global spread of resistant strains. Emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is augmented in settings in which treatment may be inadequate because of socioeconomic constraints and where there is crowding and poor sanitation. Much of the information concerning the factors that govern antibiotic use in these countries is anecdotal. No two countries are identical in their use of antimicrobial agents, and patterns of use may differ greatly in regions within the same country. Efforts to improve the usage of antibiotics in developing countries must take into consideration the perception of health and disease of the populations, the availability of antibiotics, and the characteristics of the established systems of medical care.

Keywords:
Acute Disease Anti-Bacterial Agents/supply & distribution Anti-Bacterial Agents/therapeutic use* Bacterial Infections/drug therapy* Developing Countries* Diarrhea/drug therapy Diarrhea/epidemiology Diarrhea/mortality Drug Resistance, Microbial Drug Utilization Education, Medical Humans Respiratory Tract Infections/drug therapy Respiratory Tract Infections/epidemiology Respiratory Tract Infections/mortality Socioeconomic Factors

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909