Assessment Of Rational Prescription And The Use Of Artemisinin-Based Combination Therapy Among Prescribers And Patients At Bechem Government Hospital

ABSTRACT

Background: Rational prescribing is to ensure safe and effective use of medicine. However, widespread irrational use of medicine is a problem at the various levels of health care, and leads to increased mortality, morbidity, poor health outcomes and waste of scarce resources. Objective: To assess the factors (predisposing, enabling and need) associated with rational prescription and use of Artemisinin Based Combination Therapy (ACT) among prescribers and patients at the Bechem Government Hospital. Methods: The World Health Organization core indicators of rational drug/ medicine use, prescribing tool was used to collect data from 120 outpatients’ records from January, 2018 to December, 2018. The Andersen’s behavioural model was used to investigate the use of medicines. A designed questionnaire was used to collect data on predisposing, enabling and need factors from 120 outpatients and 11 health providers/prescribers who were purposively sampled for interview. Associations between rational use of ACT among prescribers and patients (dependent variable) and prescribed or dispensed ACT, patients understanding of medicine information etc. (independent variables) were established using the Chi square test where the level of significance was set at p