Use of antibiotics by urban and rural residents in Heilongjiang Province, China: cross‐sectional study

Abstract

Abstractobjective To identify and compare the factors affecting the knowledge of, attitude towards and use of antibiotics between urban and rural residents in China.methods A total of 3631 urban and rural residents in Heilongjiang Province, China, were selected using random sampling. Questionnaires recorded demographic characteristics and participant knowledge of, attitude towards and use of antibiotics. The responses of rural and urban residents were compared, and logistic regression analysis was applied to identify the factors that may contribute to the knowledge of, attitude towards and use of antibiotics.results The majority of the participants (>60%) were aware that antibiotics could be used to treat bacterial infections and that bacteria could be resistant to antibiotics. However, only roughly half (40-60%) of the participants were aware that bacterial resistance to antibiotics had become a problem in China. Urban participants reported a more adequate knowledge of, attitude towards and use of antibiotics than rural participants. Logistic regression analysis indicated that urban residency, female gender and level of education were associated with knowledge of, attitude towards and use of antibiotics.conclusions Within our sample in Heilongjiang Province, the knowledge of, attitude towards and use of antibiotics were suboptimal in roughly half of all urban and rural residents, but better in urban than in rural residents. Targeted interventions to educate rural residents in particular may reduce the misuse of antibiotics.

Antibiotics stewardship in Ghana: a cross-sectional study of public knowledge, attitudes, and practices among communities.

“…This finding underscores the challenge of changing human behavior and suggests the need for new approaches to promote better stewardship of antibiotics at the community level. Similar to previous studies [11,31,32], women in our sample had higher knowledge compared to men. Of particular concern was the high proportion of younger individuals who had used antibiotics in the year preceding the survey, given the lower level of knowledge observed in this group.…”

“…We selected four main independent variables to include in our analysis; place of residence/region (Greater Accra, Upper West), gender (female, male), education (primary or lower, junior high school, senior high/vocational school, tertiary (university degree or currently enrolled)), and age (18-24; 25-34; 35-44; 45-54; 55-64; 65+). This was based on similar KAP studies which found significance for these variables [11,14,31].…”

Surveys of knowledge and awareness of antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance in general population: A systematic review

“…The majority of the studies (20 studies) were conducted as single-country studies while 2 studies were multi-country studies at global and regional levels [1,4]. Among the 20 singlecountry studies, 8 studies were conducted at national level [6,12,13,14,15,16,17,18] while the remaining 12 studies were conducted at sub-national level [11,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29]. It should be noted that no study was conducted in the African region.…”

“…For sampling criteria, nearly half of studies (10 out of 22) recruited only adults over 15, 18 or 21 years old [1,4,6,13,14,17,18,21,22,25]. Some studies [11,12,15,16,24,26,27,28,29] had additional criteria such as respondents' understanding of local languages, familiarity with the term "antibiotics" or whether they had lived in households or the geographical area for a certain period.…”

“…Some studies [11,12,15,16,24,26,27,28,29] had additional criteria such as respondents' understanding of local languages, familiarity with the term "antibiotics" or whether they had lived in households or the geographical area for a certain period. Almost all studies (21 studies) described specific administration methods [1,4,6,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,28,29]. Nine out of twenty-one applied only randomized sampling techniques with face-to-face interviews using a structured interview questionnaire [4,6,11,13,18,20,21,28,29].…”