One World, One Health

Gender Inequality and Superbugs

December 06, 2022 One Health Trust Season 1 Episode 16
One World, One Health
Gender Inequality and Superbugs
Show Notes

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the biggest threats people worldwide are fighting – sometimes without even knowing it’s a threat. But germs that have evolved to resist the effects of the drugs used to fight them directly kill more than a million people a year, and they’re a factor in the deaths of close to a million more.

And women are far more likely to be infected with and then to spread these drug-resistant superbugs.

In this episode of One World, One Health, we’re chatting with Dr. Deepshikha Batheja, an economist and postdoctoral fellow at the One Health Trust. Research has shown that women are 27% more likely than men to be given antibiotics, and Dr. Batheja is researching why that might be – and what can be done about it.