GoKawiilMedical microbiologist Heiman Wertheim explains why the physical appearance and labelling of antibiotics matter when trying to limit resistance.
Heiman Wertheim (right) has spoken to people buying and selling antibiotics in Ghana to understand when and why antibiotics are dispensed.Credit:Samuel Afari Asiedu
If people can’t identify antibiotics, they won’t use them with the care necessary to minimize antimicrobial resistance. Heiman Wertheim, a medical microbiologist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, is principal investigator of the Antibiotic Access and Use (ABACUS) project. He spoke to Nature about his efforts to make it easier for people to distinguish antibiotics from other medicines.
What brought your attention to this issue?
ABACUS was set up to study antibiotic consumption in low- and middle-income countries.
Nature Outlook: Antimicrobial resistance
We surveyed households in several countries in Africa and Asia about when they last used an antibiotic, and where they got it from. We also asked people coming out of pharmacies whether they had been given an antibiotic, and if so, what it was for.
It was difficult to get answers. Individuals often didn’t know what they had been given, and their medicines often lacked labelling or information leaflets. People frequently confused painkillers and antibiotics — we saw antibiotics being used for completely unrelated muscle aches.
How does this confusion come about?
Sometimes, language causes problems. In Vietnam, one word for antibiotics translates as ‘capsule’, even though other drugs are supplied as capsules and antibiotics come in other forms, too. In Mozambique and Ghana, the term ‘red-yellow’ is used, because that’s the colour of some antibiotic capsules. But they don’t all look like that.
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