Antibiotic pollution and infant mortality in India: a research note
BP2-STS
- Dumas, Christelle ORCID University of Fribourg
- Játiva, Ximena UNICEF Innocenti
- Baumgartner, Stefanie University of Fribourg
- 2025
40 p.
English
The number of deaths from antibiotic resistance is steadily rising and has become a global public health issue. Children in low- and middle-income countries are disproportionately affected, as last-line antibiotics are usually unavailable to them. Pollution of riverways due to pharmaceutical products is one driver of resistance. We assess whether this channel contributes significantly to infant mortality in India. We show that living downstream of a producer increases the risk of infant mortality by 16% and that antibiotic production explains 17,000 infant deaths in India per year. This suggests that better monitoring, new regulations, improved production processes, and strategic considerations on the location of antibiotic producers are needed to ensure that production does not induce negative externalities on the local population.
- Collections
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
- Language
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- English
- Classification
- Economics
- Series statement
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- Working Papers SES ; 543
- License
- CC BY-NC
- Open access status
- diamond
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.51363/unifr.ewp.c93w4h
- ISSN 3042-7517
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/332403
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