Prevalence and factors associated with self medication among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at Kawempe National Referral Hospital.

Abstract

Background Self-medication is the use of drugs to treat self-diagnosed disorders or symptoms or the intermittent or continued use of a prescribed drug for chronic or recurrent diseases or symptoms. Age, educational level, family attitudes, drug manufacturer advertising, and legislation regulating dispensing and sale of drugs are all factors that influence self-medication, according to recent studies. Previous experiences with symptoms or disease, significance attributed to the disease, and prescription drugs kept at home are among the others. For a vulnerable group such as pregnant women, Self-medication can have negative consequences for both the mother and the fetus, such as teratogenicity and miscarriages among others. Objectives The major objective of the study was to determine the prevalence of self-medication and associated factors among pregnant women attending antenatal care at Kawempe national referral hospital Methods The study had a descriptive cross-sectional study design and was carried out at Kawempe national referral hospital. A semi structured administered questionnaire was used to interview the patients and it was analyzed with the aid of a computer software Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS V26). Results A sample size of 309 pregnant women was used. The prevalence of self-medication in pregnancy was 54%. Modern medicines where the most commonly used followed by both modern and herbal medicine while herbal medicines being the least used. Factors that were statistically relevant (p-value < 0.05) on bivariate logistic regression were age, marital status, distance to health facility, perception of impact of self-medication, gravidity. Most of the medicines that were self-medicated were headache relievers. Based on FDA categories, Class B drugs were the most self-medicated followed by A, C and D in that order. Therefore there is a high prevalence of self-medication among pregnancy in the country and there is need of intervention to minimize the practice.