ABSTRACT

Objective: To assess the awareness of antibiotic use in livestock, spread of antimicrobial resistance linked with food chain and ways to address the issue of antimicrobial resistance in general population of Wah City, Pakistan.

Study Design: Cross sectional descriptive study.

Place and Duration: Department of Community Medicine, Army Medical College (AMC), NUMS from 1^st July to 31^st December 2017.

Methodology:  A two-stage cluster random sampling technique was used with a sample size of 400. The  data were collected by administering a validated, structured questionnaire with sociodemographic characteristics as independent variables and dependent variables of awareness of Antimicrobial Resistance being a public health threat, treatment challenges due to resistant pathogens, and antibiotics used in livestock production.

Results: More than half of the participants 240 (60.4%) out of the total of 400 were aware of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) being serious public health concern that can have serious implications on individual and family. More than half of the respondents 256 (64.1%) were aware of treatment challenges due to resistant pathogens. Overall, 77.3% i.e., 309 participants out of 400 were aware of antibiotics being used in livestock production in their country. More than sixty percent respondents had Knowledge regrading food chain as a contributor to AMR but only 37% knew about the spread of antimicrobial resistance through food chain.

Most participants agreed that the simple actions like hand washing and complete vaccination in children could help tackle the problem of antimicrobial resistance, with numbers rising to 80% – 91%.

Conclusion: Study results indicated that awareness regarding antibiotics used in livestock production was high but knowledge about food chain as a contributor to emergence and spread of Antimicrobial Resistance through food chain was quite low.

Keywords: Agriculture, Antibiotics, Antibiotic resistance, Antimicrobial resistance, Livestock, Food chain.

How to Cite This:

ShanH, MaqboolS, HassanU, Noor A. Public awareness and understanding about spread of antimicrobial resistance linked with food chain. Isra Med J. 2021; 13(3): 201-206.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.