Care – Page 3 – Antimicrobials in Society

BEYOND RESISTANCE Colloquium – Re-imagining AMR: borders, boundaries and beyond the human

“It has been said that good fences make good neighbours. But what happens when neighbours are intertwined so closely with us that they constitute our very body. In the ‘post-antibiotic era’ how can we locate, create and understand bodily boundaries, navigate borders at micro and macro level and incorporate non-humans to live microbially entangled lives. […] Jenny Westad

Self-medication with antibiotics in Maputo, Mozambique

Self-medication, as a form of self-care, is a common practice worldwide, and often involves the use of both over-the-counter and prescription-only medicines, including antibiotics, anti-malarials and others. Increasing concerns over the global emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance point to the need to reduce and optimise the use of antimicrobial medicines, both in human and […] Coll Hutchison

Microbial semiotics

As I was wrapping up fieldwork in Guatemala in late 2021, I encountered and saved an advertisement circulating on Instagram (Figure 1). It displayed a series of images of medications beginning with a box of azithromycin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic used to treat various bacterial infections. The ad was sponsored by Paiz, a Mexican and Central […] Coll Hutchison

Antimicrobial prescribing matters

Antimicrobial resistance caused by widespread use of antimicrobials is a defining challenge of our time. This article presents antimicrobial prescribing among physicians as a morally irreconcilable endeavour. Particularly, the physician may have no good option when antimicrobial resistance is seen as both (1) a global threat to be addressed at the population level, and (2) […] Coll Hutchison

Community Drug Use in Thailand

In 1997 Thailand’s WHO Country Office partially supported the First International Conference on Improving the Use of Medicines or ICIUM in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Over 270 researchers, health system managers, and policy makers from 46 countries around the world gathered and discussed various issues concerning the rational use of drug. The conference found that there […] Coll Hutchison

The Changing Management of Acute Bronchitis in Britain, 1940–1970

It has become commonplace in accounts of medicine in the second half of the twentieth-century to ascribe an “antibiotic revolution” to the years when penicillin became widely available from the early 1950s. However, to date there have been hardly any studies that demonstrate a major discontinuity in medical practices after mid-century, let alone that go […] Coll Hutchison

Antibiotics and the Biopolitics of Sex Work in Zimbabwe

The advent of antibiotics transformed the global public health landscape, dramatically improving health outcomes. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research on sex work in Zimbabwe, we examine the role of antibiotics in the management of sexually transmitted infections among sex workers, from punitive colonial approaches to “empowerment”-based discourses. We illustrate how programs for sex workers, […] Coll Hutchison

Treating Mycoplasma genitalium (in pregnancy)

Antimicrobial Resistance is a threat to individual and to population health and to future generations, requiring “collective sacrifices” in order to preserve antibiotic efficacy. ‘Who should make the sacrifices?’ and ‘Who will most likely make them?’ are ethical concerns posited as potentially manageable through Antimicrobial Stewardship. Antimicrobial stewardship almost inevitably involves a form of clinical […] Coll Hutchison

‘I am my own doctor’

As everyday life in Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon is heavily constrained by structural factors such as poverty, discrimination and limited access to quality healthcare, camp residents find ways to survive – to cope. Through six months of ethnographic fieldwork with participant observation and qualitative interviews in the informal pharmaceutical sector in Shatila, I observed […] Coll Hutchison

Microbes and Marginalisation

Reducing human-microbial encounters through improved infection prevention and control (IPC) is widely acknowledged to be critical for reducing the emergence, transmission and burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). However, despite its centrality in the Global Action Plan (GAP) on AMR and adoption as a goal in National Action Plans around the world, there has been limited […] Coll Hutchison