Disparity in socio-economic status explains the pattern of self-medication of antibiotics in India: Understanding from game-theoretic perspective
Author | Malik, Bhawna |
Author | Hasan Farooqui, Habib |
Author | Bhattacharyya, Samit |
Available date | 2022-08-25T05:53:12Z |
Publication Date | 2022-01-01 |
Publication Name | Royal Society Open Science |
Identifier | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.211872 |
Citation | Malik, Bhawna; Hasan Farooqui, Habib; Bhattacharyya, Samit (2022): Supplementary material from "Disparity in socio-economic status explains the pattern of self-medication of antibiotics in India: understanding from game-theoretic perspective". The Royal Society. Collection. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5830732.v1 |
Abstract | The emergence of antimicrobial resistance has raised great concern for public health in many lower-income countries including India. Socio-economic determinants like poverty, health expenditure and awareness accelerate this emergence by influencing individuals' attitudes and healthcare practices such as self-medication. This self-medication practice is highly prevalent in many countries, where antibiotics are available without prescriptions. Thus, complex dynamics of drug- resistance driven by economy, human behaviour, and disease epidemiology poses a serious threat to the community, which has been less emphasized in prior studies. Here, we formulate a game-theoretic model of human choices in self-medication integrating economic growth and disease transmission processes. We show that this adaptive behaviour emerges spontaneously in the population through a self-reinforcing process and continual feedback from the economy, resulting in the emergence of resistance as externalities of human choice under resource constraints situations. We identify that the disparity between social-optimum and individual interest in self-medication is primarily driven by the effectiveness of treatment, health awareness and public health interventions. Frequent multiple-peaks of resistant strains are also observed when individuals imitate others more readily and self-medication is more likely. Our model exemplifies that timely public health intervention for financial risk protection, and antibiotic stewardship policies can improve the epidemiological situation and prevent economic collapse. |
Sponsor | S.B. thanks Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), DST, India for financial support (ECR/2016/ 000591) to conduct this research |
Language | en |
Publisher | The Royal Society |
Subject | antimicrobial resistance evolutionary game theory human behaviour self-medication socio-economic growth |
Type | Other |
Issue Number | 2 |
Volume Number | 9 |
ESSN | 2054-5703 |
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