STUDY ON THE PRACTICE, KNOWLEDGE AND AWARENESS OF SELF-MEDICATION IN CHITTAGONG

Abstract

Self-medication has become a global health concern but highly emerging on the developing countries. This study estimated the prevalence and pattern of self-medication in

Chittagong. The study was conducted to determine the practice, knowledge and awareness of self- medication among general public. Self-medication has various risk factors depending on anti-drug

resistant, proper administration and knowledge about the drug they are taking. Most of the they do not examine the disease properly and hence ends up consuming the wrong drug. The research was conducted among 242 people both male and female starting from the age 18. Data were collected from 4 different pharmacies located in the main part of the city. From the result of this research,

the practice of self-medication was seen as following (19.8%) of respondents always took self- medication, (58.3%) sometimes took self-medication and (21.9%) of respondents rarely took self- medication. The common drugs that were used was analgesic (40.9%) , antipyretics ( 18.6%),

sedatives (7.9%) followed by anti-allergic (7.4%), antitussive (7.9%) and few antibiotics as well (2.9). The main reason of the respondents who always took self-medication was emergency relief (52.2%), unwillingness to visit doctor (75.0%), minor illness (19.4%) and financial restraints (10.4%) . From the overall study it was seen that people who are educated are sometimes or rarely taking self-medicated drug and are aware of checking the expiry date and other harmful effects, however people who are not educated tends to always take self-medication and most of them do not check expiry date while purchasing the drug (66.7%). Very few number of respondents knows about the adverse reaction and dependency of the drug they are taking, which might cause adverse health effect in future.