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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about half of outpatient antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary. Most of those unneeded drugs are given to treat viral colds despite the fact that antibiotics only treat bacterial infections—and not even all of those infections require an antibiotic.
The consequence of such overzealous prescribing is that more bacteria get exposed to drugs, giving them the opportunity to develop resistance. And subsequent drug-resistant bacteria can trigger difficult- or impossible-to-treat infections, which are now a critical public health threat. As many as two million people are sickened with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year in the US, and 23,000 of those die from the infection.
Getting doctors to simply stop overprescribing sounds pretty easy. But as data on failed public health campaigns shows, it is not. Simply reaching out and informing doctors of the ills of overprescribing don’t work, largely because doctors are already aware of the problem. Yet, due to other factors, they keep overprescribing. Those other factors may be lack of time to accurately diagnose an infection or pressure from patients who may see an antibiotic as a cure-all and demand a prescription.
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