Illustration reporter Kim Sang-min
It was found that the ‘antibiotic resistance rate’ in Korea is 20 times higher than that of other countries. The government said it would establish a management system with the goal of reducing the use of antibiotics by 20% compared to now, considering it to be related to the high use of antibiotics in Korea.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the 7th, the ‘antibiotic resistance rate’ in Korea has been steadily increasing. The domestic general hospital resistance rate of ‘vancobicin’, an antibiotic effective against resistant bacteria, increased from 34% in 2018 to 40.9% in 2019. The number of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which is resistant to carbapenem, an antibiotic mainly used for resistant bacteria, also increased by 60% from 11,954 cases in 2018 to 18,904 cases in 2020.
The antibiotic resistance rate was also high in the livestock and livestock sector, which is a non-human sector. The domestic resistance rate of ‘third-generation cephalosporins’, an antibiotic effective against bacterial diseases of livestock such as pigs, was 13.2%, about three times higher than that of Japan (4.6%) and more than 20 times higher than that of Denmark (0.6%). .
Antibiotic resistance is a phenomenon in which certain mutant bacteria (antibiotic-resistant bacteria) neutralize the effectiveness of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections. It is known that the higher the use of antibiotics, the higher the possibility of developing antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Since antibiotic-resistant bacteria are transmitted through routes such as agriculture, livestock, fisheries, food, and the environment, as well as humans, if resistant bacteria spread, society as a whole may be vulnerable to infectious diseases regardless of individual antibiotic doses.
The amount of antibiotics used by humans in Korea was the third highest among 29 OECD countries in 2019, and the ‘livestock production reflected usage’, one of the indicators of antibiotic usage in the non-human sector, was also higher in Korea compared to Japan as of 2017. It was found to be 2.5 times higher than that of Denmark and more than six times higher.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the ‘Second National Antibiotic Resistance Management Plan’ on the same day. First, the antibiotic use management program and medical institution antibiotic usage analysis and feedback system will be established so that medical institutions can use antibiotics appropriately, and in the livestock and fishery sector, the prescription management system for veterinarians and fishery disease managers will be activated to induce the use of appropriate antibiotics. . In the case of human antibiotics, the goal is to lower the prescribed daily drug usage (DID) per 1,000 people from 26.1 DID this year to 20.9 DID by 2025, and for non-human antibiotics, the current 217 mg per population-adjusted unit to 195 mg by 2025.
The government also announced that it will strengthen the monitoring system to curb the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the community. Through joint research on antibiotic-resistant bacteria between relevant ministries, research and development and related cooperative systems are also activated, such as investigating the actual condition of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and identifying transmission patterns.
.
