Antibiotics obtainable without prescription (proxy: non‑prescription acquisition reported)
Binary indicator (1/0) based on surveys: 1 if ≥5% of antibiotic users report obtaining antibiotics without a prescription; else 0.
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Key Insights
- •Many countries show meaningful non-prescription acquisition (flag=1), indicating that practical OTC access is common even where prescription-only rules may exist.
- •Within Europe (Eurobarometer), several countries are flagged 1 (e.g., Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain), while many Northern/Western countries are flagged 0 under the ≥5% threshold.
- •Several WHO-survey countries show high prevalence (e.g., Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria), reinforcing that enforcement and informal access can be major drivers of non-prescription antibiotic use.
Country Rankings
Top 10 Countries
Bottom 10 Countries
Data Analysis
Value Distribution
How countries are distributed across the value range
Regional Comparison
Average values by world region (Global avg: 0.60/1)
About This Statistic
A single official, global, country-by-country 1/0 dataset for whether antibiotics “can be bought without a prescription” is rarely available because laws and enforcement differ from real-world practice. To produce a comparable map-ready indicator, this statistic uses large, harmonized population surveys that ask antibiotic users whether they obtained antibiotics without a prescription.
Values are binarized using a practical-access threshold: countries are coded 1 if the surveyed share of antibiotic users who obtained antibiotics without a prescription is at least 5% (suggesting meaningful OTC/non-prescription access in practice), and 0 otherwise. Data are primarily from the WHO 2015 multi-country public awareness survey and the Eurobarometer 445 antimicrobial resistance survey (2016) for European countries.
Methodology
Step 1: Take country percentages from (a) WHO 2015 multi-country survey: % of respondents (who took antibiotics) whose last antibiotics were obtained without a prescription; and (b) Eurobarometer 445 (2016): % of antibiotic users in past 12 months who obtained antibiotics without a prescription. Step 2: Convert percent to binary flag using a threshold: value=1 if percent ≥ 5%; else value=0. Step 3: Combine both sources into a single country list (noting different survey years and question framing).
Full Data
| Rank ↑ | Country ↕ | Value ↕ |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bulgaria | 1.00/1 |
| 2 | Cambodia | 1.00/1 |
| 3 | Croatia | 1.00/1 |
| 4 | Cyprus | 1.00/1 |
| 5 | Greece | 1.00/1 |
| 6 | Hong Kong | 1.00/1 |
| 7 | Hungary | 1.00/1 |
| 8 | Indonesia | 1.00/1 |
| 9 | Italy | 1.00/1 |
| 10 | Kenya | 1.00/1 |
| 11 | Lao People's Democratic Republic | 1.00/1 |
| 12 | Lithuania | 1.00/1 |
| 13 | Mexico | 1.00/1 |
| 14 | Morocco | 1.00/1 |
| 15 | Nigeria | 1.00/1 |
| 16 | Pakistan | 1.00/1 |
| 17 | Poland | 1.00/1 |
| 18 | Portugal | 1.00/1 |
| 19 | Romania | 1.00/1 |
| 20 | Russian Federation | 1.00/1 |
| 21 | Serbia | 1.00/1 |
| 22 | Vietnam | 1.00/1 |
| 23 | South Africa | 1.00/1 |
| 24 | Sudan | 1.00/1 |
| 25 | Thailand | 1.00/1 |
| 26 | Ukraine | 1.00/1 |
| 27 | Albania | 1.00/1 |
| 28 | Andorra | 1.00/1 |
| 29 | Austria | 1.00/1 |
| 30 | Brazil | 1.00/1 |
| 31 | Belarus | 0.00/1 |
| 32 | Czech Republic | 0.00/1 |
| 33 | Denmark | 0.00/1 |
| 34 | France | 0.00/1 |
| 35 | Germany | 0.00/1 |
| 36 | Ireland | 0.00/1 |
| 37 | Kazakhstan | 0.00/1 |
| 38 | Kyrgyzstan | 0.00/1 |
| 39 | Latvia | 0.00/1 |
| 40 | Netherlands | 0.00/1 |
| 41 | Slovakia | 0.00/1 |
| 42 | Sweden | 0.00/1 |
| 43 | Tunisia | 0.00/1 |
| 44 | Türkiye | 0.00/1 |
| 45 | United Kingdom | 0.00/1 |
| 46 | United States of America | 0.00/1 |
| 47 | Uruguay | 0.00/1 |
| 48 | Azerbaijan | 0.00/1 |
| 49 | Belgium | 0.00/1 |
Topics
Data Source
This data comes from WHO (2015) Multi-country public awareness survey; European Commission Eurobarometer 445 (2016) (2016).
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