SELF-MEDICATION WITH ANTIBIOTICS: GENERAL PERSPECTIVE AMONG PEOPLE IN PESHAWAR AND MARDAN (TWO MOST POPULATED CITIES OF KHYBER PUKHTOONKHWA-PAKISTAN)

摘要

Self-medication is global problem but in developing regions, where drugs are available to customers easily it arises greater risks and challenges. Peshawar and Mardan are two big and heavily inhibited cities of a developing country, Pakistan hence in this study we aim to find the level of self-medication and general knowledge about antibiotics of the people in these two cities. We conducted our study on 500 participants from these two cities (250 from each) through a simple questionnaire. Our results confirmed that 78% of participants were using self-medication we also report that 45.2% of the participants prefer self-medication to a physician prescription. Our results also showed that 25.6% of the participants never check the expiry date on the antibiotics they use during self-medication. We also found that 63.6% of the participants believed that they know what type of antibiotic to take for which medical complications however in contrast 34.4% of participant reported that antibiotics could be used in dengue fever. We conclude that the knowledge and perception of inhabitants in Peshawar and Mardan needs to be improved to reduce the problem of self-medication in these big cities.