Abstract
In a bid to address the global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), optimization of antimicrobial use (AMU) has been emphasized; and health systems encouraged to check prescription and use of antimicrobial agents. There has been tendency to place individual behavior at the center of AMU. Using behavioral and knowledge-deficit models, the focus has been on behavior change among prescribers and users to reflect prudent prescription and use of antibiotics. Even within this intervention, more focus is placed on human health, precluding animal health despite the evidence of increased use and risk of resistance pathways between humans, animals, soils, and water particularly in the Global South.
In this talk, I introduce my PhD ethnographic fieldwork on rural farm lives and use of antibiotics in Moshi, Tanzania. I use ethnographic data on antibiotic use to advance the argument of looking beyond individual behavior. Without discrediting epidemiological and public health approaches, I argue that collective structures, not limited to the ‘socials and economics’, public policies, markets, and institutions, determine AMU. Individual behavior is bound within these structures. Based on everyday realities of (farm) lives and livelihoods, I describe how use of animal medicines (antibiotics) occurs and makes sense.
Consequently, I conclude that ethnographic sensibilities make visible and explicate wider issues of AMU. Practices emerge in a complex web embedded in lifeworlds. Without suggesting a solution to antibiotic optimization in animal (and human) use, I say that a new empirically driven framework helps us see beyond individualized stewardship approaches. I invite the audience, immediate and non-immediate, to acknowledge the role of inclusive socioeconomic structures and networks into which AMU in animals is built. I invite the audience to make comments, contributions, questions to advance this discourse.
Bio
Alex Muriithi Gateri is an anthropologist by training with a focus on social and health research particularly in sociocultural and economic determinants of health. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology and a Master’s degree in Medical Anthropology, both from the University of Nairobi. His Master’s Thesis is titled: Lived Experience of Tuberculosis Patients- Insights from Nairobi City County. Before joining HELSAM, he worked at the African Population and Health Research Center as a Research Officer.
Alex has also worked with other local and international research institutions in research and evaluation capacity. He continues to provide conceptualization, planning, coordination, implementation, and evaluation support to research projects and health programs using social science, anthropological and qualitative methods. At UiO, Alex is part of the research project entitled “From Asia to Africa: Antibiotic Trajectories across the Indian Ocean” and Medical Anthropology and History research group.