Construction of Scale to Measure Attitude of state Department of Animal Husbandry Personnel Towards Indiscriminate Use of Antibiotics in Animals

Antimicrobial resistance has become one of the major health problems in human and animals. This threat is increasing day by day and is fuelled by a range of factors. Indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animals is one of the greatest source for provoking the global threat. In developing countries, formal and informal animal health service providers are the main driving forces towards use of antibiotics appropriately in the field conditions. Presently there is no provision to monitor the type and quantum of antibiotics prescribed by service providers. Here their attitude plays an important role to combat on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by promoting judicious use of antibiotics in animals. To know the attitude of these health service providers an effort was made to develop a scale using Likert's summated rating technique to measure their attitude towards the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animals. Final scale consisted 12 statements comprising 06 positive and 06 negative statements to measure attitude on 05 point continuum from strongly favorable to strongly unfavorable. The final scale was administered to 30 veterinarians and 30 para-vets working under state department of Animal Husbandry in Telangana. The study revealed that majority of veterinarians (82%) had moderately to high favorable attitude whereas majority of para-veterinarians (80%) had less favorable attitude towards indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animals. Thus there is a need to create awareness programs through effective communication, education and training to strengthen knowledge and understanding among different stakeholders regarding optimum prescription of antimicrobial medicines to ensure the animal health and ultimately human health due to consumption of antibiotic residues in animal food and animal based products.