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General Public's Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Survey on Antibiotic Resistance 2025

Release date: 20 May 2026


General Public's Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Survey on Antibiotic Resistance 2025



Introduction

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) conducts regular surveys to monitor the trend of general public’s knowledge, attitude and practice on antibiotic resistance and to assess the effectiveness of public health interventions. The Survey on General Public’s Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on Antibiotic Resistance 2025 (KAP Survey) was commissioned to the Telephone Survey Research Laboratory of Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Research Methodology

The KAP Survey adopted the same method as the previous rounds of survey in the past few years. The target population consisted of non-institutional Hong Kong residents aged 15 or above who could speak Cantonese, Putonghua or English (excluding foreign domestic helpers). The survey was conducted from 25th November 2025 to 23th December 2025 through landline and mobile telephone interviews via random sampling. A sample size of 1084 successful interviews (379 through landline numbers and 705 from mobile numbers) was achieved, with an overall response rate of 53.2%.

Key Findings

  1. The proportion of respondents who have heard of the terms “drug-resistant bacteria” (69.3%) and “antibiotic resistance” (66.9%) have stayed relatively stable since 2023.
  2. The majority of the respondents (80.0%) correctly answered that cold and flu does not need to be treated by antibiotics, maintaining a high level compared to 49.7% in 2022.
  3. More respondents have correctly identified that antibiotics are not anti-inflammatory drugs, with 71.9% correct answers compared to 65.8% in 2024.
  4. With regards to understanding that bacteria which are resistant to antibiotics can spread from person to person, correct answers remained relatively low over the years, with about two out of five respondents answering correctly (39.2% - 44.1% from 2022 to 2025).
  5. In terms of food safety, more respondents recognized that eating raw or undercooked food increase the risk of exposure or infection from harmful microorganisms including drug-resistant bacteria, an increase to 77.9% in 2025 from 74.4% in 2024. Besides, about three-quarters (73.4%) of respondents correctly answered that thorough cooking is effective in killing drug-resistant bacteria in food.

Summary

The Department of Health has made use of the findings of the 2024 KAP survey to formulate the key messages and promotion strategies during the 2025 World AMR Awareness Week. The 2025 KAP survey results showed that the knowledge, attitude and practice of the general public in Hong Kong has been maintained on the whole. Through health promotional campaigns, the Department of Health will continue to reinforce existing knowledge and work on closing known gaps in the knowledge, attitude and practice. The current survey indicated the need for further improvement in public understanding on person to person spread of resistant bacteria.

The survey report can be accessed here.