IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v18y1984i7p551-554.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Towards better patient drug compliance and comprehension: A challenge to medical and pharmaceutical services in Zimbabwe

Author

Listed:
  • Nyazema, Norman Zimunda

Abstract

Based on in-depth interviews of hypertensive and diabetic patients attending out-patient clinics at a central hospital in Zimbabwe, it was found that patients had different ideas and attitudes about the use of medicine. Well over 60% of the patients interviewed lacked comprehension of their disease and the use of the medicine prescribed to them. Some had been to a traditional healer with their problem. The findings show that medicine-taking is a highly individualistic phenomenon. Several factors, for example education attitude and belief, have to be taken into account when trying to educate the public on the use of medicines. Everyone in the medical profession, should be involved in this type of health education. The traditional healers who still enjoy a fairly high status in the Zimbabwean society could be trained and be involved in the health education programme. Health education is the foundation of good therapy and preventive medicine.

Suggested Citation

  • Nyazema, Norman Zimunda, 1984. "Towards better patient drug compliance and comprehension: A challenge to medical and pharmaceutical services in Zimbabwe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 18(7), pages 551-554, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:18:y:1984:i:7:p:551-554
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(84)90069-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:18:y:1984:i:7:p:551-554. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.