Knowledge, attitude and practice of Gambian health practitioners towards antibiotic prescribing and microbiological testing: a cross-sectional survey

Abstract

There are deficits related to antibiotic prescriptions in The Gambia. Availability and use of microbiological services and training should be emphasized.

The knowledge, attitude and practice of health practitioners towards antibiotic prescribing and resistance in developing countries—A systematic review

“…The systematic search resulted in a total of 384 papers, with 345 papers left after removing duplicates, and 28 relevant papers upon reviewing titles and abstracts. Of these, 15 articles fulfilled our inclusion criteria upon full‐text review (Figure ), according to the United Nations, World Economic Situation and Prospects: four from Africa (two from East Africa: Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, one from North Africa: Egypt and one from West Africa: The Gambia); nine from Asia (three from East Asia: Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, four from South Asia: Bangladesh, India and two from Western Asia: Saudi Arabia); and two from Latin America and the Caribbean (one from the Caribbean: West Indies and one from South America: Peru). All the studies were cross‐sectional, 13 were quantitative studies using questionnaires, and two were qualitative studies.…”

“…Nine studies reported on participants’ awareness and knowledge on antibiotics . Reported knowledge on antibiotics was either based on correct answers to questions that assessed participants’ knowledge or based on self‐assessment.…”

“…Reported knowledge on antibiotics was either based on correct answers to questions that assessed participants’ knowledge or based on self‐assessment. Based on correct answers, two of the studies reported level of knowledge based on the proportion of respondents with correct responses to questions that assessed their knowledge, with an overall proportion of 80.9% . Three of the studies reported mean score of knowledge as 5.9 of 10 (SD ± 1.3), 6.0 of 7.0 (SD ± 1.3) and 4.7 of 7 (SD ± 1.29) .…”

“…Fathi et al reported an average of 40.5% of the respondents did not know the level of resistance of selected organisms in their health facilities. Eleven studies provided data on the extent of antibiotic resistance problem . Overall, by the proportion of respondents, antibiotic resistance was reported to be a general problem by 75.2%, a global problem by 84.7%, a national problem by 88.0%, a problem in their health facilities by 71.9% and a problem in their daily practice by 71.7% .…”

“…Seven studies reported on participants’ confidence in prescribing antibiotics . Overall, 78.2% of the participants reported that they were very confident or confident.…”