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Drivers of antibiotic use in Vietnam: implications for designing community interventions
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  • Published on: 14 July 2021
    “Antibiotic” does the term lead to confusion?

    McKinn et all state in their work published in the BMJ state that drivers of antibiotic misuse in Vietnam are socio-economic than biomedical in nature (1). However, does linguistics play a role as well?

    What is an antibiotic? The generally accepted definition is that an antibiotic is a drug that is used for the treatment of bacterial infections (less commonly to prevent), these agents can either kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria.

    However, the term antibiotic, as opposed to an antibacterial, may denote a drug with a wider activity, an agent that is active against any “biotic”. Reading on the origin of this term, it appears that this was the original meaning of this term (2).

    In a couple of recent surveys that we conducted, we identified that many people have this misconception. This was more obvious in open ended questions. In an online survey conducted in Sri Lanka, 190 (93.1%) participants out of 204 stated they knew what an antibiotic is and defined it in their own terms. However, 51 (26.8%) of this190 defined antibiotics as agents that can kill any micro-organism (3).

    In the same group of people, 12 mentioned substances other than antibiotics as examples of antibiotics, including antiseptics with antibacterial properties such as povidone iodine and triclosan, a vaccine (anti-rabies vaccine), paracetamol, chlorpheniramine and cetirizine, domperidone, aspirin, insulin, saline, and plants (cannabis and “weniwelgeta”).

    In both the...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.