The rampant practice of self-medication is indicative of very strong existing push and pulls factors. These factors could be economic, social or systemic. Despite having some beneficial effects, selfmedication has life-threatening consequences. This study was aimed to determine the factors which push users to medicine sources or factors at the sources which pull users. A pre-validated questionnaire was administered to participants. Data were collected and analyzed using Microsoft Excel and the results expressed as frequencies and percentages. From the total of 650 respondents, poverty was found to be the major push factor for 360 participants (55.39%), followed by unprofessionalism, friends' advice, previous use of medicine, lack of time, and poor price regulation as others. Low cost of medicines was found to pull 402 (61.8%) users to sources of medicines for self-medication. More than 300 of the respondents found easy access to medicine and advertising as strong pull factors. Other important pull factors include quick and time-saving, proliferation of medicine vendors, hospital crowds, and inadequate prescription checks at sources of medication. Poverty is a major push factor for self-medication, further compounded by quick access to illicit sources of medication. Consequently, users get pulled to cheaper sources, which unfortunately sell poor quality medicines, lack the expertise, or do not check prescription. Price control is required to ensure that quality medicines are accessible to users. Imposing physician prescription at all medicine sales points is a crucial step to fight the deleterious consequences of self-medication. Although self-medication has some positive elements, its practice needs to be put under control to avoid grappling with long term health complications.
Introduction:Self-medication remains a global public health concern, with many risks and benefits. This cross-sectional study seeks to analyse these potential good and bad sides and provide a balance where the negative impacts are reduced in the interest of population health. Methodology:A pilot-tested, validated questionnaire was administered to participants. Data were collected and analysed using Microsoft Excel 2010 and the results expressed as counts and percentages, pie chart and histogram.Results: Five hundred and fifty (550) questionnaires were administered, and 470 respondents filled correctly (85.45% participation rate). 57.0% of the respondents were undergraduate students, while 38.7% were within the age range 16 -20 years. Self-medication practice was found to be high among students in higher institutions as shown by a prevalence of 80.6%. Of the 470 respondents, 240 (51.1%) said self-medication practice is good as opposed to 35.3% who disagreed, respectively stating benefits and risks. Drug resistance, treatment complication and disease recurrence emerged as major risks of self-medication (22.98%, 21.70% and 18.09% respectively). Other risks included increased mortality, no drug regulation, disorder, and organ damage. Potential benefits included treatment effectiveness (20.85%), cost-effectiveness (20.21%), time-saving (16.80%), availability (16.60%) and accessibility (11.06%). Economic growth and reduced Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were also considered to be beneficial. Discussion and Conclusion:The prevalence of self-medication remains high, especially in low resource settings. This study showed that a majority of students of higher institutions favour self-medication. However, this practice needs to be kept under control to reduce the risks and maximize the benefits, towards ensuring population health.
Background: Mental Health Legislation plays an important role in the promotion and protection of the rights of persons living with mental illness and mental disability. Many Countries are making attempts to bring these legislations in line with the major international guidelines like the WHO-RB. Zambia’s Mental Health Act No.6 of 2019 challenges the community, caregivers, mental health practitioners and policy makers to rethink the ‘Medical Model’ of Mental illness and existing services. Objective: The objective of this study was to analyse and compare Zambia’s Mental Health Act No.6 of 2019 and the WHO-RB. Method: This study was a comparative analysis of two documents: Zambia’s Mental Health Act No.6 of 2019 and the WHO-RB, which contains a checklist of human rights specifications that are expected to be met at national level. This study scrutinized each component on the checklist and established the pertinent areas in Zambia’s Mental Health Act No.6 of 2019 that relate to each component of WHO-RB. Results: The Zambia’s Mental Health Act No.6 of 2019 attempted to include many legislative issues from the WHO-RB checklist. Analysis of the 27 checklist items showed that 44.4% (12/27) were adequately covered, 33.3% (9/27) were covered to some extent with missing and problematic areas clearly outlined for each of these items and 22.2% (6/27) components from the WHO-RB checklist were not covered at all in Zambia’s Mental Health Act No.6 of 2019. The items not covered at all related to rights of families or other carers, involuntary treatment in the community setting, police responsibility, housing for patients with mental illness, social security and protection of vulnerable groups. Conclusion: The Mental Health Act No.6 of 2019 makes an important contribution to mental health legislation in Zambia by bringing about the promotion, protection, respect of the rights and dignity of persons with mental illness. However, some efforts need to be made to respectively amend and include the problematic and completely absent components so as to produce a mental health act that is complete and inclusive.
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