ArticleGlobal health action2019
The 'Drug Bag' method: lessons from anthropological studies of antibiotic use in Africa and South-East Asia.
Article in Global health action, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed.
- 'Responsive Dialogues', an engagement framework for antimicrobial resistance: a cross-country qualitative evaluation in Thailand and Malawi.Global health action · 2026Article
- Impact of reducing colistin use on colistin resistance inOne health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2026Article
- Using oral and parenteral formulation of AWaRe antibiotics as a proxy estimate of community and hospital healthcare sector use.JAC-antimicrobial resistance · 2026Article
- "Miss, I want itchy medicine": Understanding what, why, and how antibiotics are used in Central Java province, Indonesia through the drug bag method.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Inventory of Survey Instruments for Monitoring Antimicrobial Use in Primary Care Settings in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Narrative Review.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Design framework to develop sustainable innovations for addressing One Health challenges.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2025Article
- Evaluating methods to explore antibiotic use on smallholding pig farms in peri-urban Kenya.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2025Article
- Article
- Prevalence of antibiotic self-medication and knowledge of antimicrobial resistance among community members in Neno District rural Malawi: A cross-sectional study.IJID regions · 2024Article
- Exploring Antibiotic Use in the Community: A Household-Based Survey Using the Drug Bag Method in Rural Burkina Faso.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Exploring drivers of self-treatment with antibiotics in three agricultural communities of northern Tanzania.Antimicrobial resistance and infection control · 2024Article
- Treatment seeking and antibiotic use for urinary tract infection symptoms in the time of COVID-19 in Tanzania and Uganda.Journal of global health · 2024Article
- Understanding the veterinary antibiotic flow in Malawi: complexities, gaps and needs.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2024Article
- Treatment seeking behaviours, antibiotic use and relationships to multi-drug resistance: A study of urinary tract infection patients in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Addressing antimicrobial resistance through community engagement: a framework for developing contextually relevant and impactful behaviour change interventions.JAC-antimicrobial resistance · 2023Article
- Co-designing community-based interventions to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR): what to include and why.BMC research notes · 2023Article
- Risk Factors, Temporal Dependence, and Seasonality of Human Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamases-Producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae Colonization in Malawi: A Longitudinal Model-Based Approach.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2023Article
- Investigating One Health risks for human colonisation with extended spectrum β-lactamase-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae in Malawian households: a longitudinal cohort study.The Lancet. Microbe · 2023Article
- Unravelling patient pathways in the context of antibacterial resistance in East Africa.BMC infectious diseases · 2023Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
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Abstract
Understanding the prevalence and types of antibiotics used in a given human and/or animal population is important for informing stewardship strategies. Methods used to capture such data often rely on verbal elicitation of reported use that tend to assume shared medical terminology. Studies have shown the category 'antibiotic' does not translate well linguistically or conceptually, which limits the accuracy of these reports. This article presents a 'Drug Bag' method to study antibiotic use (ABU) in households and on farms, which involves using physical samples of all the antibiotics available within a given study site. We present the conceptual underpinnings of the method, and our experiences of using this method to produce data about antibiotic recognition, use and accessibility in the context of anthropological research in Africa and South-East Asia. We illustrate the kinds of qualitative and quantitative data the method can produce, comparing and contrasting our experiences in different settings. The Drug Bag method produce accurate antibiotic use data as well as provide a talking point for participants to discuss antibiotic experiences. We propose it can help improve our understanding of antibiotic use in peoples' everyday lives across different contexts, and our reflections add to a growing conversation around methods to study ABU beyond prescriber settings, where data gaps are currently substantial.
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