Knowledge and Awareness Regarding Antibiotic Use and Resistance among Hospital Admitted Patients in DMCH

Background: Antibiotic resistance imposes a threat to global human health including Bangladesh. To overcome these problems, current status of public?s knowledge and awareness regarding antibiotic use and resistance needs to be assessed first. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the existing knowledge and awareness regarding antibiotic use and resistance among hospital admitted patient. Methods: This cross-sectional observational study was conducted in the indoors Department of Medicine, Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for six-month period following approval of this protocol. People aged greater than18 years, admitted in medicine department were approached for inclusion in the study. Written informed consent was taken from the subject and ethical issues were ensured. A preformed semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents meeting inclusion criteria. Total 100 samples were interviewed for data collection and data were analyzed by computer with the help of SPSS 21. Results: Among 100 patients, maximum (39%) were in 18-29 years age group. Mean age was 29?5.4 SD (years) with male predominance (58% vs. 42%). Most of the respondents (31%) completed HSC, 20% had passed primary, 18% had passed SSC and 9% had completed graduation or above. Rate of antibiotic use in lifetime about 94%. Usually choice of antibiotic was directed by physician 47.40% (n=45) followed by village doctor (20%) and by others. Knowledge regarding antibiotics had no homogenous pattern. Of all, 37% believed that antibiotic can work against virus, 45%-believed common cold is caused by bacteria and 40% believed cold is caused by virus. However, almost half of the respondent knows that it can cause side effects and antibiotic should be stopped during appearance of any side effects. On the other hand, 64% patients had knowledge about antibiotic resistance rests 36 patients had not familiarity with antibiotic resistance. Conclusion: Knowledge about use of antibiotics are not homogenous but more than two thirds of the patients had knowledge regarding resistance of antibiotics. However, further larger multicentre studies are recommended.