A Household Survey on Extend of Home Medication Utilization and Storage Habits –A Cross Sectional Survey

Abstract

Medicines plays a vital role in day-to-day life. Piling up of medicines in households leads to irrational use of medicines. This study aimed to investigate household medication taking behaviour, reasons of medicines storage in household, disposal practice of unused medication and determinacy of self- medication among family members. Study was carried out in Urban areas of North Karnataka by using interviewer administered questionnaire on 433 household participants. Data from the questionnaire were analyzed using appropriate statistical tools. Among surveyed households, 412 households have at least one unused medication in household which were stored unsafe and in reach of children. Out of 433 study participants (54.5%) were males and (45.5 %) were females. The stored drugs found in household mainly belongs to five categories; Antihypertensive (25.6%), Anti-diabetic (20.6%), analgesics and antipyretics (14.1%), NSAIDs (11.5%) , Anti –biotics (10.2%) . Majority of the drugs (84.7%) were purchased on prescription .96.9% of them are throwing the unused medication in garbage. We found that a significant proportion of the medications were found in the Urban households and had stored unused medication in household for future use and none of those medicines are stored safely and the unused medications were not properly disposed too. Hence there is need to conduct a programme to create necessary awareness among the public regarding storage and safe disposal methods of unused drugs.