Being AWaRe: benchmarking antibiotic use

In this issue of The Lancet Public Health, Aislinn Cook and colleagues1 present modelled estimates of optimal antibiotic use for 186 countries, territories, and areas (CTAs). The authors first estimated optimal antibiotic use, both overall and by WHO Access, Watch, Reserve (AWaRe) category,2 using publicly available data on disease burden and antibiotic resistance. Then, accounting for socioeconomic characteristics, they identified benchmark CTAs for each of four clusters of CTAs, grouped by income.