A Study on the prevalence and pattern of self-medication practies in children in Dhaka

Abstract

Self medication became a common trend in South-Asian sub content and now it is becoming a potential threat for the Bangladesh health sector. From the survey it was estimated the prevalence and pattern of the self medication practices in Dhaka. The study was performed to determine the perception, extent, reasons and sources of self medication practices among the children. Self medication is a threat for our country especially for the children. Parents of these children are taking medicines from dispensaries without knowing anything about the drugs. Sometimes they do not examine the disease in a proper way thinking the fever a normal issue. The research was conducted among 503 parents of children from different places of Dhaka city. From the result of this research, it was determined that the many parents (62.22%) self medicated their children and maximum children were (50.50%) in 1yr to 5yr range. With fever (46.92%) different kind of disease like common cold (29.82%), gastrointestinal (14.71%) being the disease mostly affected the children. They are also suffering from respiratory problem (9.54%) and dermatological problem (5.96%). In addition to these they suffered from eye problem, typhoid, pain in throat. Most of the cases paracetamol (54.63%) was self medicated by the parents. Desloratadine/ fexofenadine (23.64%), oral saline (10.22%), sulbutamol (6.71%) also be taken by them as self medicated to their child. Sometimes they went the homeopathy doctors also. From the research it can be mentioned that parents do not know much about the self mediation and antibiotic, other drugs they used can be resistance. They have no knowledge about the resistance problem of antibiotics. Only a small number of parents know about all those of things. In our country dispensaries are the main sources of medicines. They should not be sold the medicines without physician’s prescription. To obtain the whole picture of the aforementioned crisis in Bangladesh, further studies are required.