KAMPALA — Researchers have warned the public to desist from taking drugs without a prescription — saying self medication poses a great danger to their health.
Ms. Veronica Masanja, a Uganda Public Health Fellowship Program fellow whose research focused on self medication in the context of Covid-19 said failure by people to adhere to medical instructions and using self medication are affecting their health and in many instances, resulting in death.
Self-medication outside of formal healthcare can lead to increased morbidity, mortality, delays in appropriate care, adverse drug reactions, and antimicrobial resistance, according to Masanja
It involves buying medicines over the counter to treat physical and psychological ailments.
Although the practice of self-medication seems a cheaper and convenient option for most people, she warns that it has severe long term consequences.
Key among other potential risks of self-medication practices include; wrong diagnosis, delays in seeking medical advice when needed, severe or adverse reactions, dangerous drug interaction, and incorrect drug administration, incorrect dosage and masking of severe diseases.
The most common medicines used for self-medication during the COVID-19 period were antibiotics which she says are very worrying because they contribute the highest to microbiol resistance in Uganda
“And we know how dangerous that can be especially with the current outbreak of infections in the country,” she said, also explaining to reporters that in a situation where people can no longer respond to antibiotics, it becomes a major concern.
Findings show that access to medicines from Ugandan private facilities is largely unrestricted.
Ideally, for most drugs, one needs to present a prescription from a doctor before they can buy drugs from a pharmacy.
“You walk in a pharmacy and say you want Amoxil and no one will ask you why you want Amoxil. We should start with regulation of medicines,” Musanja said.
She urged pharmacists to adhere to regulations that have been passed by the National Drug Authority— also explaining that the right medical prescription should be written out properly, indicating the date, name of the patient, age, sex, type of disease (diagnosis), drug and duration for which the medicine should be taken.
“We need to address problems from the grassroot but we should also look at some short term measures. We need to increase the sensitisation of communities to understand the dangers of self medication.”
“Let us tell the communities that self medication may appear to help know, but it has long term effects and one of them the biggest is antimicrobial resistance, a condition she said is very dangerous especially in a country that is facing a lot of new and re-emarging infections.”
She says that drug resistance is the biggest danger resulting from self-medication due to improper use of drugs that only require medical prescriptions such as antibiotics, strong pain killers and even anti-malarials.
The most commonly used antibiotic medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic according to findings was Azithromycin.
She said Azithromycin isn’t a first line antibiotic drug in most of the small infections.
“People were using this strong antibiotic for small infections such as cough and small cold to manage the suspected symptoms of Covid-19.
“If people develop resistance to a drug like Azithromycin, then options such people are left with are very limited, costly and probably not readily available in public institutions,” she said.
Highlighting the effects of drug resistance, the chief executive of the National Drug Authority (NDA), Dr. David Nahamya says it also heavily impacts the economy.
For instance, when the population faces drug resistance, it means the government has to go in for more expensive medicines. For example, he says, the government ment had to resort to expensive anti- malarial drugs, such as coartem, after the more affordable drugs, such as chloroquine and fancidar, failed to work.
“In the long run, the treatment may turn out to be expensive and you may have to be admitted. Yet, it would have been cheaper if you got to the hospital early,” Nahamya says.
In the worst case scenario, taking an under-dose by self-medication can also result in loss of life, especially if the disease progresses to complications as a result of improper treatment.
Dr. Alex Riolexus Ario, the Director of Uganda’s National Public Health Institute (UNIPH) said the delayed 2022 National Field Epidemiology Conference, now in it’s 8th edition, helps health experts to discuss important sector developments.
“This conference is like the ultimate of what has taken place throughout the year. So we hold it towards the end of the year and then we bring in all these priority topics that we actually present to the scientific world but also to the general public.”
The conference was held ahead of the Friday annual graduation ceremony for the Uganda Public Health Fellowship Program Cohort of Fellows who completed their Advanced Field Epidemiology Training.
The program is implemented by the Ministry of Health (MoH) in conjunction with Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It is a two-year training-in-service program aimed at equipping public health professionals with skills to manage public health challenges and become the next generation of public health leaders.
Each fellow made a summary of their achievements over the much sought-after two years training in applied epidemiology and public health practice, including a detailed presentation of one of their projects.
Fellows presented the evidence of competencies acquired in disease outbreak investigation especially COVID-19, public health surveillance, oral and written scientific and nonscientific communication, and public health leadership.
Fellows presented work ranging from response to disease outbreaks such as COVID-19, HIV testing, drug resistance, scabies, air quality in Kampala, teenage pregnancies, hypertension, male circumcision among others.
Measles, HIV/TB/HIV, HIV/Cervical Cancer, Anthrax, among others to client satisfaction surveys and health service delivery assessments in refugees and other settings. Fellows also implemented projects to improve disease surveillance and service delivery in health centers.
