Antibiotic usage practice and knowledge on antimicrobial resistance among livestock and poultry farmers of Telangana state, India

ABSTRACT

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a silent pandemic faced parallel to COVID-19 pandemic, owing to indiscriminate usage of antimicrobial agents by large mass of people as part of self-medication and unsupervised therapy protocols. This similar kind of situation does exist in livestock and poultry farming sector, which has led to AMR issues like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) mastitis. AMR is really an alarming issue which needs to be addressed or else in near future it would be difficult to treat or control infections in both humans and animals. Reduction in indiscriminate antimicrobial usage and AMR issues in animal husbandry sector requires intervention in animal husbandry practices. In order to device such intervention practices, first we need to document the field level antibiotic usage and knowledge level on AMR. But unfortunately, data on AMR issues at field level were deficit and poorly documented in India. Hence this cross-sectional study was carried out to explore the knowledge and usage pattern of antibiotics among livestock and poultry farmers of Telangana state of India through direct interview method. Cent per cent of the farmers responded that antibiotics were used mainly for therapeutic purpose followed by prophylactic (32%), metaphylactic purpose (44.5%) and as growth promoters (8.33%). Farmers (78%) responded that they purchase the antimicrobial agents over-the-counter. Oxytetracyclines and Enrofloxacin were the two major antibiotics used abundantly by the livestock farmers. Large proportions of famers (80%) were neither following full dosage regime of antimicrobial used nor the withdrawal period, while antimicrobial usage on their animals owing to lack of awareness and knowledge regarding the AMR. Significant differences were found amongst the livestock and poultry farmers with respect to their knowledge level on antimicrobial usage and AMR in animals.