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Background self-medication is an act whereby an individual decides to select and use certain types of medication which are approved and available without a prescription, or an advice from a doctor to treat self-recognized symptoms. It is becoming a common practice of self-care by people of different community levels. Different studies worldwide reveal that self-medication with different drugs occurs at all age group.
Students like any other in the general population suffer from number of diseases presenting with common symptoms like fever, pain, common cold, respiratory symptoms of which an intervention is required to treat them, some are treated by the Doctor in hospitals and some are treated without consulting a Doctor by self medication.
Aim of the study; To determine the prevalence and associated factors for self-medication among university students in Moshi.
Objectives: To determine the prevalence of self-medication among university students, to identify socioeconomic factors associated with this practice. To determine Medical conditions that made students self-medicate. Also, to determine the common medications used and the sources of these drugs.
Methodology: This is an analytical cross-sectional study conducted in three universities located in Moshi municipality, Kilimanjaro Tanzania. Stratified sampling was used to study 150 students from each of the three universities selected. Furthermore, each university sample was divided into three equal groups based on education level, 50 students from each of degree level, diploma level and certificate level. Within each level of education simple random sampling was performed, gender was taken into consideration.
Results: Majority of the students (275=61.1%) reported to be sick in last three months before the study. The prevalence of self-medication among the students was 62.7%. The common used medications included; Antibiotics 49.3%, Antimalarials 39.0%, Analgesics 29.8%, Cough and cold medications 21.6%, Sleep medication 11%, Vitamin preparations 9.2%, skin topical application 8.5%, Alimentary tract and metabolism 2.5%, Local herbs 4.6%, others 0.7 (antallerge and inhalers). None of the social factors like age, sex, level of education, living status as well as economic factor were associated with self-medication. The common medical conditions for which students self-medicated were; headache 44%, fever 35.5%,
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Stomach pain 31.9%, General body weakness 24.1%, emotion stress 10.3%, (upper respiratory symptoms, pain, skin disease and bone fractures accounted for 6.7%). The common source of medications used for this practice were from the local pharmacies 48.9%.
Conclusion: Self-medication is a common practice among university students. Antibiotics were the most common self-medicated agents, this is different from the study done in Serbia where analgesics were the most used drugs. This could be attributed by the fact that students who more often than not had common symptoms of headache and fever self diagnosed themselves with any kind of infections, this made them to use a lot of antibiotics. Antimalarials were also used by students, which could further explain self treating with suspected parasitic infections. The use of these agents could result into resistance of disease causing organism due to improper dosage according to age and weight, improper dosage timing and incomplete dose. Some students used local herbs from traditional healers, this could have a serious effect since these herbs are not researched scientifically for human safety. |
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