Antibiotic Use in a Rural Community in Bangladesh

Hossain M M (International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, GPO Box 128, Dacca-2, Bangladesh), Glass R I and Khan M R. Antibiotic use in a rural community in Bangladesh. International Journal of Epidemiology 1982, 11: 402–405. Antibiotic use by 175 000 people in the Matlab rural surveillance area (MSA) of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) was studied to identify practices which might affect microbial drug resistance. We surveyed a 3% sample of drug purchases from pharmacies in the MSA over a four-week period in August and September 1980. Fifty-seven drug purchases were made per thousand Matlab residents per week; 9% of these were of tetracycline and 26% were antibiotics. Forty-eight per cent of the antibiotic tablets…