Topic 4: Blindsided · Antimicrobial resistance

The medicine we assume will always work

Antibiotics quietly hold up routine surgery, childbirth, intensive care and aged care: five charts trace what happens when that quiet assumption starts to crack.

S4145593 · RMIT University · Data: ACSQHC (2025), AGAR, IHME & Our World in Data (2024)

Every year, tens of millions of antibiotic prescriptions are dispensed across Australia, for ear infections, urinary tract infections, skin wounds, post-surgical recovery, and the everyday illnesses of growing old. Antibiotics are so woven into routine healthcare that it is easy to forget what they actually are: a finite, shared resource. Every prescription is also a small contribution to bacteria learning how to survive them. Most people picture antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a rare hospital “superbug” story. The data tells a broader one: a system working exactly as expected, and what that system is quietly putting at risk.

Each chart below carries a small signal line, marking where that finding sits between routine antibiotic use and active drug resistance.

Chart 01 of 05

Antibiotics are still everywhere

Routine useResistant threat

Antibiotic use in Australia is not rare or occasional. It is a routine, everyday part of the healthcare system, repeated millions of times a year. Use the buttons above the chart to isolate one category, or hover over any point for the exact figure.

23.2M
antimicrobial prescriptions dispensed under the PBS/RPBS in 2024, almost all of them J01 antibacterials.

Chart 01 of 05

Antibiotics are still everywhere

Routine useResistant threat

In 2024, Australia dispensed 23.2 million antimicrobial prescriptions through the PBS/RPBS: not a rare event, but a routine one repeated tens of millions of times a year. Almost all of it was J01 antibacterials, the everyday antibiotics used for common infections. Used this widely, antibiotic resistance is not a niche hospital problem. It is something embedded in everyday healthcare.

Use the buttons to isolate one category, or hover for the exact count.

Source & variables
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (2025). Antimicrobial use in the community: 2024 (Table 1). Variables: year, all antimicrobials, J01 antibacterials, non-J01 antimicrobials. The 2016 dip in non-J01 antimicrobials reflects chloramphenicol eye drops being rescheduled for over-the-counter sale, not a real fall in use.

Chart 02 of 05

Resistance is already here

Multivariate

Resistance is not a future problem: it already exists across Australia, and unevenly. Some bacteria-drug combinations show low resistance in one state but much higher resistance in another. The sharpest example is vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, which ranges from around 25% in Western Australia to more than 88% in the Northern Territory. This is not a distant future threat. It is already unevenly embedded in Australia’s infection landscape.

Hover over any cell for the state, organism, resistance measure and exact percentage.

25% – 88%
the spread in vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium resistance from the lowest state to the highest.
Source & variables
Australian Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (AGAR), Surveillance Outcome Programs, bloodstream infection isolates, 2023. Variables: state or territory, organism, resistance measure, resistance percentage. Tasmania’s Klebsiella pneumoniae complex result was not reported due to insufficient isolates and appears blank.

Chart 03 of 05

Resistance kills through ordinary infections

Antimicrobial resistance is often discussed as a superbug problem, but its largest impacts occur through ordinary infections. In 2021, lower respiratory and bloodstream infections accounted for the highest numbers of AMR-attributable deaths globally. Resistance does not create new diseases: it makes familiar ones harder to survive.

Hover over any bar for the full breakdown: AMR-attributable deaths, non-AMR deaths, total deaths, and AMR share.

0.9M+
combined AMR-attributable deaths from bloodstream infections and lower respiratory infections in 2021.
Source & variables
Naghavi, M., et al. (2024). Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance, 1990 to 2021. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, presented by Our World in Data. Variables: infection syndrome × AMR-attributable deaths × non-AMR infection deaths × AMR share of total infection deaths. Figures are global estimates, not Australia-specific.

Chart 04 of 05

How prescribing behaviour contributes

Multivariate

This is not just a story about bacteria evolving. Prescribing decisions matter too. Repeat prescriptions can reflect continuation of a treatment course, but they can also make antibiotics easier to use “just in case”. From April 2020, repeats were temporarily banned for five common antibiotics. The chart shows how repeat-prescribing patterns differed by antibiotic before and after that policy change.

Click a name in the legend to hide it, or double-click to isolate one antibiotic.

Source & variables
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (2025). Antimicrobial use in the community: 2024 (Table 2). Variables: antibiotic, year, repeat-prescription percentage, and repeat-prescription count (shown as marker size). 2020 is excluded because repeats were temporarily banned for amoxicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, cefalexin, doxycycline and roxithromycin from April that year; the shaded band marks the gap.

Chart 05 of 05

The people most exposed

Aged care home residents make up a small share of Australia’s population, but account for a much larger share of antimicrobial prescribing. In 2024, residents represented roughly 0.7% of the population but received 2.8% of antimicrobial prescriptions. The Australians most exposed to antibiotics are often the Australians least able to absorb the consequences of resistance.

Hover over either bar for the exact percentage and what it represents.

Source & variables
Prescription share is calculated from Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (2025). Antimicrobial use in the community: 2024 (Tables 1 and 5): aged care residents’ total antimicrobial prescriptions as a share of the national total, both for the same year. Population share is aged care residents as a share of the Australian population. (Confirm the exact source for the population-share figure here.)

References

Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC). (2025). AURA 2025: Fifth Australian report on antimicrobial use and resistance in human health. ACSQHC.

Australian Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (AGAR). (2023). Australian antimicrobial resistance surveillance reports. AGAR.

Naghavi, M., et al. (2024). Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis. The Lancet.

Our World in Data. (2024). Antimicrobial resistance. https://ourworldindata.org/antimicrobial-resistance

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com

Anthropic. (2025). Claude [Large language model]. https://claude.ai

Acknowledgements

Generative AI tools (ChatGPT by OpenAI and Claude by Anthropic) were used to assist with story development, chart design ideas, troubleshooting R/R Markdown code, and improving the narrative flow of the visualisations. All datasets were independently sourced, analysed, interpreted, and visualised by the student. All final design decisions, written content, and conclusions are the student’s own work.