‘Horrifying’ number of Hongkongers take antibiotics, leading microbiologist says
Government survey finds 49 per cent of 1,200 surveyed say they have taken the drug in the past year leading to worries about overuse
Almost half of Hongkongers surveyed said they had taken antibiotics in the past year, up from 35 per cent in 2011, prompting one of the city’s top microbiologists on Thursday to describe the results as “horrifying”.
A health department survey, conducted this year, found that 49 per cent of the 1,200 people said they had taken antibiotics in the past 12 months. Among them, 2 per cent did not obtain the medicine used to treat bacterial infections from a doctor.
Overall use is up from 34.6 per cent in a similar survey done by the department in 2011, which polled 1,527 people.
Health officials in Hong Kong and mainland China unite to battle deadly superbugs after new threat discovered
“This is really horrifying … I haven’t taken antibiotics in the past 30 years,” said professor Yuen Kwok-yung, chair of infectious diseases at University of Hong Kong, at a HKU conference discussing global issues of antimicrobial resistance.
The overuse of antibiotics has long been a concern of the local and international health community because it contributes to the rise of so-called superbugs, which are bacterial strains that are resistant to common antibiotics.
In July, the government released the Hong Kong Strategy and Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance, which lays out a five-year plan to contain the threat of superbugs.
Yuen, who also chairs an expert panel under the government’s High-level Steering Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance, said that 48 per cent of all Staphylococcus aureus bacteria cases in Hong Kong were drug-resistant – four times higher than the percentage in Britain.
