Antibiotic Prescription Audits Among Pediatric Outpatients With Acute Ailments in a Secondary Care Hospital During the COVID-19 Omicron Wave in Northern India

Background Antibiotics, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), are pharmaceuticals used to treat bacterial infections. There is growing recognition that inappropriate antibiotic prescription in children is linked to increasing rates of severe adverse drug events and higher medical expenditures. There are a few prescriptions audit studies from smaller cities in Northern India, especially those conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic when the unregulated private sector accounted for 90% of antibiotic sales and 75% of healthcare requirements. The study objectives were to determine the rate of outpatient antibiotic prescription and adherence to WHO drug indicators in prescriptions to pediatric outpatients in private healthcare facilities in India. Methodology This cross-sectional survey was conducted over three months (January to March 2022) in the outpatient setting of a private pediatric hospital in Kanpur, a city having a population of nearly three million population located in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. Prescriptions of children aged <10 years with a history of onset of complaint <14 days were included in this audit. Prescriptions were numbered; data were collected using a specially designed semistructured, pretested prescription audit checklist; and the recommended WHO indicators were also calculated. Data were entered using CSPro (U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, USA) and analyzed using STATA 15 (StataCorp LLC, College Station, TX, USA). Results This study observed an antibiotic prescription rate of 65.75%, which was higher than the WHO-recommended value, which might indicate indiscriminate usage of antibiotics in the setting. Out of the 144 antibiotic medications prescribed, none were generic and all the antibiotics were prescribed presumptively. The most commonly prescribed medicines were cefpodoxime, azithromycin, and ofloxacin, which were primarily used to treat cough and stomach infections. Conclusions This antibiotic audit conducted in a private hospital outpatient setting in a city in Northern India during the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic found nongeneric, predominantly oral, presumptive antibiotic prescriptions in nearly two out of three young pediatric patients. Improvement in prescribing practices through regulation, monitoring, and antibiotic stewardship in low-resource settings is urgently warranted to curb the impending global pandemic of antimicrobial resistance.