Awareness of antibiotic resistance

It’s good to come back with a post after a long hiatus, packed with pandemic and COVID-19 related work. Thanks to the SWD data challenge and the storytellingwithdata folks for encouraging a submission with our own data and story in this challenge!

Early this year, my work with Somdatta Karak at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology led to an interesting collaboration with a young student Manya, and the Superheroes Against Superbugs initiative. We wanted to look at the level of awareness among educated urban Indians, by circulating a survey on AMR via Manya’s student connections. The respondents were representative of all age groups, mostly from the student’s families, and answered questions designed to assess their awareness of the problem of antibiotic resistance and their behavior in terms of usage of these drugs.

A majority of the people know about Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) - nearly 70% of the respondents were familiar with the concept, with women showing a slight lead in most age groups. This is also reflected in their usage related responses. However, the respondents who are aware of AMR also appear to use antibiotics without prescription at an almost similar proportion as those who do not know about AMR (sunburst pie). This was a pilot survey, and going ahead we should design better messaging to bring about a change in irresponsible antibiotic usage in this group.

Many thanks to the tutorial by Andy Kriebel on creating a pie chart drill down. The sunburst by Alexander Mou is also a cool viz - one that I have recently been practising a lot with!