The French take fewer antibiotics. Above all, this trend observed for several years has been strongly accentuated by the Covid-19 crisis. The consumption of these drugs fell in 2020, Public Health France announced on Tuesday.
In a study carried out using data on reimbursements made by Social Security, the organization measured the evolution of “defined daily doses”, that is to say the reference dose of each antibiotic for an adult of average weight, relative to the French population. She also evaluated the number of prescriptions for antibiotics made by liberal doctors. In terms of both consumption and prescription, the drop is significant and similar: 17% in the first case and 18% in the second.
Fewer appointments with the doctor
This is an unprecedented drop in recent years, because the health crisis has played a role. The barrier measures and confinements, put in place in the face of Covid 19, have reduced the spread of other diseases and therefore the need for antibiotics. But the restrictive measures have also discouraged the French from consulting a doctor “in particular during the first confinement”, advances Public Health France.
More broadly, the consumption of antibiotics has already tended to decline since the 2010s even if it had never done so much as last year. Reducing this consumption is an objective pursued by the health authorities, in France and in other countries, in order to curb the appearance of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Among the developed countries, France is particularly concerned because the consumption of antibiotics remains almost a third higher than the European average.