World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week ended last week.

Antimicrobials are medicines used to prevent and treat infectious diseases. These can be used on humans, animals and plants and come in the forms of antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals and antiparasitics.

Although resistance to these medicines occurs naturally, due to genetic changes in pathogens over time, this process can be exacerbated when humans use antimicrobials too frequently or do not finish a course fully. The result can be deadly, with dangerous strains of bacteria endangering lives and threatening the ability to treat common infections and, as a result, to perform life-saving procedures from cancer chemotherapy to caesarean sections.

As Statista's Anna Fleck details below, a recent report by the OECD highlights significant disparities in antibiotic prescribing practices across countries.

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Among those providing data, Greece had the highest prescription rate in 2023, with 26.7 defined daily doses (DDDs) per 1,000 people.

This is well above the OECD average of 16 DDDs and nearly three times the level seen in Sweden and the Netherlands, where the rates were 8.7 and 8.8 DDDs per 1,000 people, respectively.

While the volume of antibiotics prescribed has generally decreased across most OECD countries, Finland (-5.8 DDDs/1,000) and Canada (-5.6 DDDs/1,000) have shown the greatest reductions since 2013.

The OECD states that antibiotics should only be prescribed when supported by clear evidence.

Antibiotic resistance can also build up through more indirect means, such as via eating the meat of live feed that has been treated with antibiotics, or consuming meat or dairy products contaminated with antibiotic resistant pathogens. 

Data from 2020 shows that countries such as Thailand, China and Australia rely on the practice of giving animals antibiotics far more heavily than nations including Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.