A Study on the prevalence of self-medication among urban population in Makkah region

The majorities of the population pay little attention to the health issues and accord little or no priority to medical checkup which leads to the preference of Self-Medication practice. This study was conducted to determine the knowledge and practice of the prevalence of self-medication among urban population in Makkah region. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with a target population of 1000 participants over the period of three months. The data was collected in the form of well designed specific questionnaires related to self-medication along with other informations related to the bio-informatics of the individual, etc., both in English and Arabic language. This cross-sectional survey study was conducted by blending both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection during an awareness campaign and through direct interview with the participant. The collected data were analysed by the Microsoft Excel and SPSS. The values were presented as numbers (%). IBM SPSS, IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., USA, version 23 was utilized for analysis. Statistical comparisons were made by Pearson Chi- Square test. The data were significant if P-values were < 0.05. The analysed results of the collected data suggested that the effort was needed in ensuring that the drive is required to discourage the practice of the self-medication and encourage the visit to the medical practitioners to follow the proper guidelines of the prescribed medications. It is necessary to study the factors associated with the uptake of medications among the studied population and avoid the complications of self-medication.