Comment by blueblisters
8 hours ago
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) is the drug of first choice for addressing pain and fever, in India at least. To the extent that it's regularly abused, and I know people who have been hospitalized because of abuse.
Even then, doctors are usually disapproving of ibuprofen (or some combination of it with paracetamol) unless paracetamol is contraindicated for some reason, and I had always wondered why.
I did listen to this 99% Invisible story about the use of NSAIDs in India once[1]
What you describe in an interesting contrast to the situation in The Netherlands. Here, virtually no one is prescribing ibuprofen _without_ also prescribing a baseline of paracetamol.
[1]: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/579-towers-of-silence...