| dc.description.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. | en_US |
