Question about Antibiotics

In my last posting, one of my family left a question regarding the use or misuse of antibiotics here in Macau, I thought others would enjoy my response as well. This was her comment, "Question for you: There is so much in public health here about washing hands and the use (overuse) of anti-bacterial products. How does China deal with this? Do they promote the use of all these anti-bacterial products? Do they have the same resistent bugs that we face due to the use of anti-biotics?"

My response: In Macau and Hong Kong I have seen advertising on tv and on street signs that stress the importance of taking antibiotics only when a doctor prescribes them and to finish the complete course of antibiotics when they are prescribed. Here it is not necessary to have a doctor prescription to get most of the drugs from a pharmacy on the street. Only narcotics and addictive types of drugs are restricted. The problem is that some pharmacies have been known to either dilute the medication or switch the medication with a cheaper version or a substance that is not even close to the original drug. So most doctor offices have a pharmacy within the office. This provides more trust to the quality of drugs given. The mind set towards taking antibiotics is worse here than in the States. They feel that they should be better in 2-3 days from any illness after seeing the doctor. So if they do not feel better they go back to the doctor, if they feel better, they stop the medicines. As far as anti-bacterial creams/form/gels they are not really used here. Although more people wear medical masks. Some of the doctors here say this is left over from the SARS epidemic.

So far MRSA has not been seen wide spread in the community as it is becoming in the U.S. I am not in the hospital setting, so they may have hospital acquired MRSA and other resistant bacteria present.