Knowledge and practice of drug shop attendants in Wakiso District on antibiotic use

Abstract

Introduction: The misuse of antibiotics is leading to increased antibiotic resistance. Drug shops in Uganda have been found to sell antibiotics to the public despite the fact that they are not allowed to do so. Assessing knowledge and practice of drug hop attendants is one of the ways of addressing the problem of antimicrobial resistance and interventions will be identified. Study Objective: The general objective of this study was to assess the Knowledge and Practice of drug shop attendants in Wakiso district on antibiotic use Method: The study used a cross-sectional designwhere an interviewer administered a closed ended questionnaire to 288 drug shop attendants. Multivariate models were used to estimate the OR and 95%CI of the associations between knowledge or practice and socio-demographic characteristics. Results: 36.4% of the respondents had good knowledge and 38.5% had good practice with regard to antibiotic use. In the adjusted model; the odds of being knowledgeable were 0.486 times higher for respondents aged 30-39 years (adj OR=0.486 , 95% CI;0.272 to 0.869, P=0.015) than those aged less than 30 years. Also the the odds of having good practice among the drug shop attendants on antibiotic use was in the urban region were 0.523 times higher than the odds of for respondents in the rural region. (adj OR=0.523, 95% CI; 0.314 to 0.873 , P=0.013).

Conclusions: This study revealed that drug shop attendants had inadequate knowledge and practice on antibiotic use. Therefore increased training and supervision will fight the spread of antibioticresistance and improve patient safetyin the community.