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Tackling inappropriate antibiotic use in low-and middle-income countries

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New data show that electronic clinical decision support systems integrated with point-of-care tests can lead to meaningful reductions in antibiotic use in children in low- and middle-income countries, without compromising health outcomes — but investment in human resources is crucial to their success.

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Fig. 1: Effect of an electronic clinical decision support algorithm and point-of-care tests on antibiotic use.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA

    Sena Sayood & Sumanth Gandra

  2. Centre for Neonatal and Pediatric Infection, St George’s University of London, London, UK

    Julia Bielicki

  3. Pediatric Research Centre, University Children’s Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Julia Bielicki

Authors
  1. Sena Sayood
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  2. Julia Bielicki
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  3. Sumanth Gandra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sumanth Gandra.

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Competing interests

S.G. is a member of the WHO Essential Medicine List Antimicrobial Working Group, which is involved in the development of the WHO AWaRe Antibiotic Book. The authors report no other competing interests.

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Sayood, S., Bielicki, J. & Gandra, S. Tackling inappropriate antibiotic use in low-and middle-income countries. Nat Med 30, 33–34 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02725-6

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