This strategy works. In the early 1990s, Finnish public health authorities responded to rising bacterial resistance to erythromycin by discouraging its use as a first-line treatment for certain infections. From 1991 to 1992, erythromycin consumption per capita dropped 43 percent. By 1996, bacterial resistance to the antibiotic had been cut almost in half. Data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey show that bronchitis and URIs account for a third of the nation's antibiotic prescriptions.
Antibiotics treat only bacterial infections and are completely powerless against viral illnesses.
Every doctor knows this. Yet, according to a recent study by Dr. Ralph Gonzalez, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, when adults consult physicians for URIs and the bronchitis that often follows them, more than half walk out with a prescription for an antibiotic. If doctors simply stopped prescribing antibiotics for conditions they know don't respond to them, we'd instantly be well on our way to minimizing antibiotic resistance. Physicians are quick to blame the public. Patients, they say, demand antibiotics, and doctors are so terrified of malpractice suits they prescribe them to keep their customers happy and their lawyers at bay.