Occurrence and Treatment of Common Health Problems in a Nigerian Community
Medicines are cost-effective interventions for the treatment and management of health problems. This research was carried out to determine the common health problems and medicine-use practices in treating health problems in Lamingo, Jos, Nigeria. A total of 109 households covering 676 individuals we...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
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Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd
2012
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3326783/ |
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pubmed-33267832012-04-20 Occurrence and Treatment of Common Health Problems in a Nigerian Community Auta, A Banwat, SB Dayom, DW Shalkur, D Avu, MO General Pharmacy Medicines are cost-effective interventions for the treatment and management of health problems. This research was carried out to determine the common health problems and medicine-use practices in treating health problems in Lamingo, Jos, Nigeria. A total of 109 households covering 676 individuals were recruited and followed up for a period of one month between 6 November 2010 and 11 December 2010. A structured interview was conducted on weekly visits to households to identify illnesses suffered by household members and treatment given. The results showed that 146 common health problems representing 1.3 cases per household per month were found. The cost of treatment per household per month was found to be $14.7. Infectious and parasitic diseases (44.6%), diseases of the digestive (11.0%) and respiratory system (9.6%) were common in the community. Self-medication was common (34.6%) and the patent medicine stores were the most common sources of medicines. Common classes of medicines used by community members were analgesics (23.6%), antimalarials (17.9%) and antibiotics (14.2%). Factors that influenced choice of treatment were previous knowledge and experience of family members with service provider and treatment (44.4%), cost (18.9%) and severity of condition (16.7%). There is, therefore, high occurrence of health problems and self-medication practices in the Lamingo community. Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd 2012 /pmc/articles/PMC3326783/ /pubmed/22523461 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/0975-1483.93571 Text en Copyright: © Journal of Young Pharmacists http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Auta, A Banwat, SB Dayom, DW Shalkur, D Avu, MO |
| spellingShingle |
Auta, A Banwat, SB Dayom, DW Shalkur, D Avu, MO Occurrence and Treatment of Common Health Problems in a Nigerian Community |
| author_facet |
Auta, A Banwat, SB Dayom, DW Shalkur, D Avu, MO |
| author_sort |
Auta, A |
| title |
Occurrence and Treatment of Common Health Problems in a Nigerian Community |
| title_short |
Occurrence and Treatment of Common Health Problems in a Nigerian Community |
| title_full |
Occurrence and Treatment of Common Health Problems in a Nigerian Community |
| title_fullStr |
Occurrence and Treatment of Common Health Problems in a Nigerian Community |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Occurrence and Treatment of Common Health Problems in a Nigerian Community |
| title_sort |
occurrence and treatment of common health problems in a nigerian community |
| description |
Medicines are cost-effective interventions for the treatment and management of health problems. This research was carried out to determine the common health problems and medicine-use practices in treating health problems in Lamingo, Jos, Nigeria. A total of 109 households covering 676 individuals were recruited and followed up for a period of one month between 6 November 2010 and 11 December 2010. A structured interview was conducted on weekly visits to households to identify illnesses suffered by household members and treatment given. The results showed that 146 common health problems representing 1.3 cases per household per month were found. The cost of treatment per household per month was found to be $14.7. Infectious and parasitic diseases (44.6%), diseases of the digestive (11.0%) and respiratory system (9.6%) were common in the community. Self-medication was common (34.6%) and the patent medicine stores were the most common sources of medicines. Common classes of medicines used by community members were analgesics (23.6%), antimalarials (17.9%) and antibiotics (14.2%). Factors that influenced choice of treatment were previous knowledge and experience of family members with service provider and treatment (44.4%), cost (18.9%) and severity of condition (16.7%). There is, therefore, high occurrence of health problems and self-medication practices in the Lamingo community. |
| publisher |
Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd |
| publishDate |
2012 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3326783/ |
| _version_ |
1611521109490925568 |