Lethal drug probe in China: the case of Xinfu clindamycin.

In China, antibiotics are prescribed frequently, not only for bacterial infections but also for viruses, including the common cold, as well as other illnesses.12 Chinese people tend to believe that antibiotics are a cure for many diseases from skin infections to life-threatening lung ailments; and antibiotics are their first choice when they think about buying medication.3 Antibiotic abuse is particularly severe in small- and medium-sized towns and rural areas where doctors are not as well educated as in the large cities. Statistics from the World Health Organization reveal that the use of antibiotics in Chinese hospitals can be as high as 80 percent of overall cases, compared with the international average of 30 percent.3 Besides being one source of the specific public health disaster described in the remainder of this article, overprescribing generally leads to building up of resistance to antibiotics, making it more difficult to treat bacterial infections in the future.