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Profile Of Antibiotic Use At The Health Centre
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Outpatient’s
clinics deliver therapeutic services to a large segment of patients.
General Outpatients Departments (in the Teaching and General hospitals),
and the outpatient clinics in the private health institutions are the
ones that see and treat the patients first. It is only cases that
require further medical evaluation that are referred to the specialists.
Private
health institutions have substantial clientele who patronize them for
various reasons; some of which include absence of long queues,
convenience of opening/ consulting hours, better attitude of staff,
greater confidence in a particular doctor, and increase in likelihood of
privacy (Foster, 1995). Consequently large quantities of drugs are
prescribed during the clinic encounters. Assessment of prescribing
pattern in these important medical facilities is of great relevance to
identifying problems regarding rational drug use, so as to propose
interventional measures in cases of significant irrational prescribing.
Appropriate
drug utilization studies are important tools used to evaluate whether
drugs are properly utilized in terms of efficacy, safety, convenience,
and economic aspects at all levels in the chain of drug use (Dukes,
1993). The importance of rational drug use in clinical practice is
underscored by the introduction in 1975 by World Health Organization
(WHO, 1977, 1991) of the “Essential Drugs List (EDL) Conceptâ€, which was
followed up with the drawing up of an EDL in 1977 and setting up of
implementation program in 1981(WHO, 1987). These initial critical steps
have resulted in the improved supply of essential drugs to health care
facilities in developing countries (Hogervzeil et al., 1993; WHO/DAP/
INRUD/ 93.1, 1993). With these programs in place, the need to improve
rational use of the drugs became imperative and this was highlighted at
the WHO sponsored multidisciplinary meeting of experts held in Nairobi
in 1985 (WHO, 1987). To this end, a set of objective measures for the
evaluation of prescribing practices (Drug Use Indicators: Prescribing
Indicators, Patient Care Indicators, and Facility Indicators) were
introduced through collaborative work of the Drug Action Program of the
World Health Organization (DAP-WHO) and the International Network on the
Rational Use of Drugs {(INRUD)(WHO, 1991; 1993) Isah et al.,/ICIUM,
1997).
Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), Nigeria in collaboration
with WHO, launched the maiden edition of National Drug Policy (NDP) in
1990 and published the revised edition in 2005; with the goals of making
available at all times to the Nigerian populace adequate supplies of
drugs that are effective, affordable, safe, and of good quality; to
ensure the rational use of such drugs and to stimulate increase local
production of essential drugs at all levels on the basis of health needs
(NDP, 2005). WHO Drug Use Indicators are standard measures that have
been tested in many settings and found useful in controlling
inappropriate prescribing (Hogervzeil et al., 1993). They have to a
reasonable extent unified and clarified the concept of rational drug use
which had until then appeared abstract, making previous research works
on rational drug prescribing to be restricted to using methods,
expressions and variables that were peculiar to their settings and that
did not allow for direct comparison with other settings (Oviawe et al.,
1989). Availability of EDL at the health care facilities (HFs) and the
WHO drug prescribing indices have therefore unified and made more
practicable the concept of rational drug use, and enabled comparisons of
drug use practices within and between health facilities, regions and
countries. They provide useful tools for supervision and monitoring of
drug use practices as well as allowing for evaluations of the impacts or
changes that interventional efforts might have made over time (Isa et
al., 2001).
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ] The indiscriminate use of antibiotics has become a global problem with implications for effective therapy of infections and dose resistance. The objective of this study is to determine the profile of antibiotic use at the health centre of Delta State University, Abraka. This study was a retrospective study of 592 patient prescriptions from January – June 2015. The data used for this study was obtained by assessing patients’ medical record file from the Medical Record Department a ... Continue reading---
