Saudi Arabia’s public health efforts in targeting antimicrobial resistance: Awareness and intervention through a media campaign

Abstract

Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a threat that would affect the whole world, and the misuse of antibiotics increases the emergence of AMR. In Saudi Arabia, antibiotics used to be sold as over-the-counter medication. The Saudi government initiated a campaign to combat AMR. Aims: This study aimed to discover if the Saudi efforts to combat AMR by changing people’s behaviour is in line with the academic. Methods: This study adopted two strategies to meet its aims. First, a semi-systematic review was used to analyse the relevant literature in order to understand related consumer behaviours and community pharmacists’ interactions with consumers. Second, a search conducted to identify the nature and content of the campaign “Only with Prescription” through its news feed, in order to give an overview of what the Saudis have done for this cause, and comparing these results to the evidence. These strategies used a thematic analysis to examine the results. Results: Part 1: findings of the review; The results indicate that the major issue in Saudi Arabia is the poor knowledge of the consumers regarding antibiotics and AMR. Additionally, there are behaviours such as home storage of antibiotics, sharing them and demanding antibiotics from physicians. Moreover, the analysis revealed that community pharmacists were acting like salesmen to keep their businesses going and therefore contributed to the use of non-prescribed antibiotics. Part 2: The analysis of the campaign indicated that the Saudi government only focused on the behaviour of pharmacists (as a commercial determinant of health) using upstream interventions to warn against selling antibiotics, rather than providing an adequate and massive awareness campaign to the public. Conclusion: This study concludes that the Saudi government should provide a proper health education to the public, as their behaviour will still persist even after the prevention of the sale of over-the-counter antibiotics.