There’s been a serious drop in the amount of British Columbians taking prescribed antibiotics.
Between 2005 – 2014, the BC Centre for Disease Control recorded daily prescriptions went from 1.79 per 1000 residents to 1.58/1000. That’s about a 15% decrease.
BCCDC Executive Director Dr. Mark Tindall wants this trend to continue so patients need to understand not every check up ends in meds.
“If you wait in your doctor’s office for half an hour and you’re feeling sick of you have a fever, often people are not that satisfied with the fact that it’s likely a virus so there needs to be quite a bit of public education.”
However, he adds it’s a two-way street. a major reason for the decrease was doctors stopped overprescribing medication on the side of caution, especially to children.
“If your child had a fever and we had no quick way to diagnose what was going on, ‘here’s some antibiotics just to be on the safe side.’ The message that that’s probably not good for the children or the community has gotten out there so a lot of the progress has been made on childhood and community prescribed antibiotic use.”
Overprescribing antibiotics also leads to an immunity to the medication. The World Health Organization records there haven’t been any new types of antibiotics developed in the last 30 years. An immunity could create a post-antibiotic era where people across the world could die from common infections and injuries.
The reduction also means a cut in costs. In 2014, the antibiotic prescribing costs were down $53 million from 2005.
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