| dc.description.abstract | Self-medication is the use of medicines without any prescription or consultation from health
professionals, usually over-the-counter (OTC) drugs are obtained for the treatment of minor
common illnesses. Self-medication is more or less practiced globally. The aim of the study was
to estimate the prevalence of self-medication, type of drugs used to treat common illnesses and to
determine the factors related to self-medication. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was
conducted in the selected private pharmacies of Thimphu. The study population included both
male and female aged 18 years and above who visited the pharmacies for medicine. The
collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 20.0. Out of 275 participants, 115 were
male and 160 were female. The prevalence of self-medication for male and female were 57.4%
and 65.0%, respectively. Most of the participants have done self-medication for eye/ear infection
(90.9%), fever (84.9%), and headache (80.5%). Types of drugs used for self-medication were
multivitamins (80.0%), followed by NSAIDs (72.5%) and antibiotics (8.3%). Self-medication
was mostly recommended by friends/neighbors (79.6%) (46.5%) and self-decision (77.8%). Self-
medication practice was common among individuals aged between 18 to 25 years. Self-
medication exercise was more common in female than male. The study highlights that the
respondents have less knowledge about drug-resistant and side effects of the drugs they take for
self-medication and therefore, proper drug regulations and interventions inclusive of self-
medication in the country should be implemented for controlling self-medication practices.
Further study is needed in Bhutan both in the rural and urban places to assess the prevalence of
self-medication to provide proper health care services to the people. | en_US |
