Socioeconomic factors correlating with community antimicrobial prescribing
Genevieve Walls, Alain C Vandal, Tanya du Plessis, Veronica Playle, David J Holland
Increasing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is a serious concern worldwide and in New Zealand. Increased bacterial resistance is linked to high numbers of community antibiotic prescriptions. New Zealand has surprisingly high rates of community antibiotic prescribing, which need to be decreased. Within New Zealand, Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB) has the highest rate of community antibiotic prescribing. We hypothesised that there might be socioeconomic factors that influence antibiotic prescribing in our DHB. This paper showed that a higher ratio of number of people in a house to bedrooms in the house (which might indicate crowding) was associated with higher rates of antibiotic prescriptions. There may be a number of reasons for this association and further research is needed in other DHBs and within Counties Manukau DHB.