Subsidised overuse of antibiotics brewing superbug perfect storm

Li Junlong, 22, had never been to a hospital. On his pay as a migrant worker in Beijing, he could not afford a medical bill that went beyond a couple of hundred yuan.

But Mr Li, a cargo carrier at a construction site in Chaoyang district, had high hopes when he went to the Dongzhimen Hospital of Chinese Medicine with a bad cold earlier this month. A month before, he had been admitted into a government-subsidised insurance programme.

'I asked the doctor if I had the flu and he said 'maybe'. I told him that I was insured and he gave me lots of pills,' Mr Li said. He left the building with a sense of relief and a bag full of antibiotics.

Antibiotics do not cure most colds, coughs, sore throats or runny noses, and they are ineffective against influenza. But to Mr Li and hundreds of millions of farmers, migrant workers and low-income city residents - who are beginning to join and benefit from China's rapidly growing medical insurance programme - antibiotics have become an affordable panacea and one that mainland hospitals are cashing in on.

Antibiotic abuse is expensive and damaging to public health. It has increased the frequency and ferocity of outbreaks of multidrug-resistant bacteria - like the notorious superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA - on the mainland. Medical experts have warned that an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant diseases will hit the world on an unprecedented scale if the mainland's medical welfare system turns out to be a breeding ground for the germs.

In just a few years, Beijing has tripled spending on programmes for rural and low-income urban residents. One programme, called the new co-operative medical scheme, is expected to cover the entire rural population by the end of this year.