Drug Utilization at Household Level in Nekemte Town and Surrounding Rural Areas, Western Ethiopia: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: At household levels drug may be hoarded and re-utilized inappropriately, shared within families and/or outside family and unnecessarily utilized in self-medication. Therefore this study was conducted to assess drug utilization at household level in Nekemte town and surround-ing rural areas western Ethiopia. Methods: It was conducted on 844 households' head through in-terviewing where households were stratified into urban and rural; a household was selected by using systematic random and cluster sampling in the town and rural areas respectively. Results: It was found that prevalence of drug hoarding was 49.9% where urban areas were 1.4 times more likely to hoard drug than rural areas (Adjusted OR = 1.4; 95% CI = 1.02 -1.8) and it was also found that drug hoarding was associated with level of households' education where household heads who had level of education higher than or equal primary were 1.5 times more likely to hoard drug (Adjusted OR = 1.5; 95% CI = 1.04 -2.3). The prevalence of drug sharing was found to be 24.9% where urban areas were 0.4 times less likely to share drugs than surrounding rural areas (Crude OR = 0.4; 95% CI = 0.3 -0.6). Nineteen point five percent of illness episodes were reported from total surveyed households where 36.3% of them were self-medicated with modern medicines. Self-medication with modern drugs was significantly associated with age older than fifteen years old (Crude OR = 0.37; %CI = 0.2, 0.83). Conclusions: Drug hoarding, sharing and self-medication with modern drugs particularly antibiotics are commonly practiced in the community, so they should be avoided through educating general public on drug use so as to minimize of risk of using expired drugs and accidental poisoning; under dose and inappropriate use; and combat antim-icrobial resistance.