Introduction: Rational use of drugs requires that patients receive medications appropriate to their clinical needs, in doses that meet their own individual requirements for an adequate period of time, at the lowest cost to them and their community. The issues of irrational use of medicines is global and that a global approach coordinated by WHO with more vigorous implementation of leadership and evidence based advocacy of rational use of medicine is essential Materials and Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive and quantitative study was conducted at Dilla University Referral Hospital to determine the current prescribing practices. 1440 prescription were selected using systematic random sampling and reviewed retrospectively for a 2-year period from from September 01/2016 to August 31/ 2018 using prescriptions and Prescription registry. Results: The average number of drugs prescribed per prescription was 1.813  ranging from 1 and 6. 1437(99.79%), 1287(89.38%), 1392 (96.67%), 1428 (99.17%) and 0(0%) of the analyzed prescriptions had name of the patient, date, medical record number, age and address of the patients respectively. Antibiotic and injection was prescribed in 842(58.47%) and 94(6.53%) of encounters respectively. The Percentage of drugs prescribed by generic name and from an essential drug list was 85.33% (n=2227) and 97.43% (n=2543), respectively. Of the total 2610 drugs, 2431(93.14%) drugs were actually dispensed. Conclusion: Polypharmacy, percentage of encounters with with injection and percentage of drugs from essential drug list was within acceptable range. The prescribing practice for antibiotics and generic medicines shows significant deviation from WHO. Keywords: Prescription auditing, WHO prescribing indicators,  Dilla University Referral Hospital.

Introduction: Obstetric complications continue to be the major causes of maternal mortality in low- and middle-income countries. Knowledge of women toward obstetric danger signs is an important part of improving maternal and fetal outcomes. However, the reported level of knowledge on obstetric danger signs is low and inconsistent. Methods: Community-based cross-sectional study design was used. Data were collected from randomly selected 740 pregnant women. A pregnant woman said to have good knowledge of obstetric danger signs if she spontaneously mentioned at least two of the danger signs during each of the three periods (pregnancy, labor/childbirth, and postpartum) and otherwise said to have poor knowledge of obstetric danger signs. Adjusted odds ratio at 95% confidence interval and a value of p < 0.05 were used to identify the predictors. Results: A total of 740 pregnant women participated in the study with the response rate of 97.5%. One hundred twenty-four (16.8%) of the respondents were knowledgeable about obstetric danger signs. According to our study, age range of 20–24 years (adjusted odds ratio = 6, confidence interval: 2.67–17.44) and 25–29 years old (adjusted odds ratio = 2.4, confidence interval: 1.14–5.10); being housewife (adjusted odds ratio = 0.5, confidence interval: 0.28–0.87); monthly income of ⩽1000ETB (adjusted odds ratio = 0.24, confidence interval: 0.12–0.46) and 1001-2500ETB (adjusted odds ratio = 0.24, confidence interval: 0.12–0.47); and primigravida (adjusted odds ratio = 0.09, confidence interval: 0.04–0.18) and primipara (adjusted odds ratio = 0.15, confidence interval: 0.07–0.30) were factors significantly associated with knowledge of obstetric danger signs. Conclusion: Knowledge of obstetric danger signs among pregnant women was low. Maternal age, average monthly income, maternal occupation, parity, and gravidity were factors significantly associated with the knowledge of obstetric danger signs.

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) now ranks alongside HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) as a leading cause of death worldwide. Globally, 9.6 million people were estimated to have fallen ill with TB in 2014. The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge and healthcare seeking behaviour of tuberculosis patents in Gimbi General Hospital, West Ethiopia.METHODS: A cross sectional study was conducted among tuberculosis patients from March 8 to April 30, 2015. The data collection method was face-to-face interview through structuredstandard questionnaire. To identify the factors associated with knowledge about TB and healthcare seeking behavior, backward logistic regression analysis was used.RESULTS: Of the 138 TB patients, 85(61.6%) had good knowledge about TB while 53(38.4%) had poor knowledge about TB. On multivariable logistic analysis, poor knowledge about TB was more likely to occur among TB patients in intensive treatment phase (Adjusted odds ratio (AOR)=4.1, 95% CI= 1.7-9.6, p=0.001).CONCLUSION: TB patients had good knowledge on signs and symptoms of TB, transmission of TB and healthcare seeking behaviour of TB, but their knowledge on the cause of TB, treatment of TB and prevention of TB were not adequate. This study also revealed that the health careseeking behaviour of TB patients were good.

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Background. Drug use evaluation is a system of continuous, systematic, criteria-based drug evaluation that ensures the appropriate use of drugs. Rationalization of drug therapy in emergency medicine would be useful in managing the broad array of conditions that present for emergency care. High-quality drug utilization is associated with the use of a relatively limited number of essential medicines. The World Health Organization developed core drug use indicators for conducting drug utilization studies in healthcare setting. WHO core drug use indicators including prescribing indicators, patient care indicators, and health facility indicators are used nowadays. Objective. The aim of this study was to evaluate the drug use pattern in the Emergency Department of Dilchora Referral Hospital, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, 2018. Methods. A retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in the emergency department (ED) of Dilchora Referral Hospital from July 20 to August 19, 2018, using structured data collection format. Result. Out of 344 prescriptions analyzed, a total of 753 medications were prescribed. The average number of drugs per prescription was 2.19. Of drugs prescribed, 685 (90.97%) were in their generic names. Antibiotics were prescribed in 95 (27.62%) of encounters, and injections were prescribed in 154 (44.77%) of encounters. Among 753 medications prescribed, the name and strength of drugs are indicated in 100% and 95.22%, respectively. 679 (90.17%) of drugs were prescribed from the essential drug list of Ethiopia. Conclusion. The findings of this study revealed that the drug utilization pattern was not optimal in accordance with the standard values of WHO prescribing indicators. Some of the prescribing indicators like overprescribing of antibiotics and injections were a problem. Therefore, it is very imperative for the concerned stakeholders and healthcare providers to work toward ensuring drug use according to the standard.

Patients and Methods: A hospital-based prospective observational study design was employed to assess the antimicrobial use-related problems among adult patients admitted to Dilla University Referral Hospital from 5 March to 4 September 2018. The antimicrobial therapy was reviewed to assure compliance with the recommendations of the national guidelines or evidence-based international clinical guidelines and drug therapy problem was identified. The logistic regression model was fit to determine the association between the different factors and the occurrence of drug therapy problems. Odds ratio was used to show a comparison of factors contributing to drug therapy problems. Statistical significance was considered at p-value <0.05. Results: In this follow-up to 229 participants, the prevalence of antimicrobial therapyrelated problem was 70.74%. "Noncompliance to therapy" was the most frequent DTP experienced by 68 (29.69%) of the patients followed by "needs additional drug therapy" seen among 31 (13.54%) patients. "Adverse drug reaction" was the least and experienced by 7 (3.06%) patients. Others include: dosage too low among 22 (9.61%), dose too high among 17 (8.30%), unnecessarily prescribed antimicrobials among 17 (7.42%) and ineffective antimicrobials among 8 (3.49%) patients. Compared with those who used less than four drugs, the use of four to six (AOR: 4.024) and seven and above (AOR: 13.516) drugs were determinants for antimicrobial use problems. Additionally, infectious cases not addressed by the national guideline (AOR: 3.328) and the unavailability of appropriate lab values results within 48 hours of hospital admission (AOR: 1.285) were determinants for antimicrobial use problems. Conclusion: Antimicrobial use problem was prevalent with 0.94-problems-per-patient. Polypharmacy, coverage of national guidelines and availing laboratory values within 48 hours of hospital admission were independent determinants of antimicrobial use problems.