Consumption of Antimicrobials in Georgia as a Public Health Challenge

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance affects people at all stages of life, as well as the healthcare, veterinary and agricultural industries, making it one of the most urgent public health problems in the world. It causes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every year. The damage caused by it is huge and Georgia, unfortunately, is no exception. The fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to create new antimicrobials can have catastrophic consequences, because if antibiotics lose their effectiveness, we lose control of the treatment of infections and public health threats. Irrational use of antibiotics is one of the important factors of antimicrobial resistance. Georgia, as a non-EU member state, reports on the use of antibacterial agents at the WHO Europe Office, although the information is based solely on antimicrobial import data and is therefore incomplete. It is impossible to disagregate it, for example, according to the types of medical institutions. In the absence of adequate information, in some cases it is not possible to give a reasoned explanation for the increase or decrease in the use of this or that group of antibiotics. For instance, in 2017, the use of trimethoprim in the country was in the top ten of the leading antimicrobials, while the diseases of the genitourinary system for which it is used, were not even included in the top five of acute diseases. Consequently, based on such data, it is impossible to correctly determine the profile of the country in terms of antimicrobial use, which makes it difficult to develop and implement the right policies to improve it. Within the framework of the paper, a study is planned to study the cause-and-effect relationship between the prevalence of acute diseases and conditions in the country and the use of antimicrobial drugs, as well as the development of targeted information systems in this area. Quantitative and qualitative research methods will be used for this purpose. Relevant databases will be processed by quantitative methods, and interviews with stakeholders will be processed by qualitative methods. The obtained data will be in tegrated, evaluated and analyzed, based on which conclusions and practical recommendations will be developed. In addition, the concept of an information system will be developed to create an information system in terms of consumption of antimicrobials in the country, which will facilitate its design and implementation. This in turn will allow us to have more accurate and less hypothesized data, which is extremely important for pursuing the right policy towards antimicrobial resistance.