Paediatric diarrhoea study shows docs prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily

Paediatric diarrhoea study shows docs prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily

Jahnavi@timesofindia.com 27.09.2025

Bengaluru : A new study on prescription of antibiotics has revealed something surprising: The biggest reason doctors prescribe unnecessary antibiotics for children with diarrhoea isn’t because they don’t know better, it is because they think parents expect “strong medicines”. The study, titled ‘Investigating the know-do gap in antibiotics prescribing: Experimental evidence from India,’ published in Science Advances, analysed 2,282 private healthcare providers across 253 towns in Karnataka and Bihar (50% from each state) treating paediatric diarrhoea. When doctors were presented with cases of viral diarrhoea in kids (where antibiotics aren’t needed), a staggering 70% still prescribed them. Researchers identified three factors behind this — doctors’ assumptions that parents demand antibiotics; financial incentives from selling medicines; requent shortages of oral rehydration salts (ORS) — the recommended treatment for diarrhoea. Doctors were worried that not prescribing “strong medicines” (usually assumed to be antibiotics) would drive patients to other doctors. The experiment showed caretakers preferred providers who gave more medicines overall, with ORS combined with zinc. “Diarrhoea remains a leading cause of preventable child and infant deaths, yet lifesaving treatment with ORS is under-prescribed, with utilisation rates below 20%. WHO guidelines clearly state ORS should be prescribed for all cases of diarrhoea due to its critical role in preventing fatal dehydration,” said Arnab Mukherjee, professor of public policy and chairperson of PGPPM at IIMB and one of the study’s authors.