Assessment of the knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacovigilance by pharmacists in two states in southeastern Nigeria

Jude A Udoye,Raymond I Ozolua,Jude Nwokike

doi:10.4314/tjpr.v17i5.25

Abstract

Purpose : To evaluate knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of pharmacovigilance (PV) and adverse drug reactions (ADRs) reporting among community and hospital pharmacists in Abia and Imo States of Nigeria. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was done using a validated questionnaire distributed among hospital and community pharmacists in the two States. Results: Out of the 227 copies of the questionnaire administered, 169 (74.4%) were usable. Only 22% of all the pharmacists had postgraduate qualification but 78.0% had more than five years postqualification experience. All respondents were aware of the concept of PV; 73.4% had seen a patient with ADR while 17.7% had not seen the ADR reporting form in use in Nigeria. Only 24.3% had officially reported an ADR. Factors that affected reporting were lack of incentive (52.1%), role conflict (69.2%), and role overload (72.8%). Mean score for KAP-related questions was higher among hospital pharmacists than their community counterparts. Conclusion: The study has shown that while all pharmacists were aware of PV, the attitude and practice of many of them constituted a challenge and accounted for poor level of reporting. Keywords: Adverse drug reactions, Community pharmacists, Hospital pharmacists, National Pharmacovigilance Centre

Highlights

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) rank among the leading causes of death in many countries [1,2,3]
In each of the States, there was a Federal Government of Nigeria owned tertiary health facility and an ADR Monitoring or Drug Safety Committee that was responsible for receiving cases of ADRs and forwarding confirmed cases to the National Pharmacovigilance Centre (NPC) in Abuja, the Federal Capital
The level of awareness of PV by hospital pharmacists was found to be low [18] and low level of awareness was reported for community pharmacists in Lagos State [20].The increase in awareness of the concept may be attributed to more recent regular broadcast of PV jingles by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on news media

Summary

Introduction

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) rank among the leading causes of death in many countries [1,2,3]. The annual health bills arising from drug-related adverse events have been estimated to be very high [4,5]. The Nigerian drug safety scenario is worse than what obtains in developed countries because of widespread irrational use of medicines [7,8]. The presence of unregulated drug markets, weak regulatory systems, lack of enforcement of the regulations, and inadequate resources to monitor safety of medicines [9] are major issues in Nigeria. The community and hospital pharmacists directly relate with patients much more than their counterparts in the industry, regulatory agencies and the academia [11].

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion