IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0091667.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Patent Medicine Dealers and Irrational Use of Medicines in Children: The Economic Cost and Implications for Reducing Childhood Mortality in Southeast Nigeria

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin S C Uzochukwu
  • Obinna E Onwujekwe
  • Chinenye Okwuosa
  • Ogochukwu P Ibe

Abstract

This study assessed the economic costs of irrational medicine use by Patent Medicine Dealers (PMDs) for malaria, acute respiratory infection (ARI) and diarrhea diseases (DD) in Nigeria. Exit interviews were conducted with 395 respondents who sought care for their children from 15 PMDs in Abakpa district of Enugu state Nigeria. Of the total respondents, 80.0% received treatment for malaria while 12.0% and 8.0% received treatment for DD and ARI respectively. The average number of drugs dispensed per patient was 6.8, average percentage of patients given injections was 72.5%, average percentage of patients given one or more antibiotics was 59.7%, while the percentage of patients given non essential drugs was 45.9%. The additional costs to the standard treatment in Naira was 255, 350 and 175 for malaria, ARI and DD respectively. The losses attributable to irrational dispensing was 4,500 Naira. However, more than half of the drugs were on essential drug list, implying some cost savings for the consumers, but the high number of drugs (6.8) on average/patient is likely to increase the total cost of drugs cancelling out the cost savings to consumers arising from dispensing essential drugs.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin S C Uzochukwu & Obinna E Onwujekwe & Chinenye Okwuosa & Ogochukwu P Ibe, 2014. "Patent Medicine Dealers and Irrational Use of Medicines in Children: The Economic Cost and Implications for Reducing Childhood Mortality in Southeast Nigeria," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-5, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0091667
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0091667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091667
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091667&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0091667?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oshiname, Frederick O. & Brieger, William R., 1992. "Primary care training for patent medicine vendors in rural Nigeria," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 1477-1484, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Onah, Michael Nnachebe & Horton, Susan, 2018. "Male-female differences in households' resource allocation and decision to seek healthcare in south-eastern Nigeria: Results from a mixed methods study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 84-91.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ahmed S Rahman & Mohammad Rafiqul Islam & Tracey P Koehlmoos & Mohammad Jyoti Raihan & Mohammad Mehedi Hasan & Tahmeed Ahmed & Charles P Larson, 2014. "Impact of NGO Training and Support Intervention on Diarrhoea Management Practices in a Rural Community of Bangladesh: An Uncontrolled, Single-Arm Trial," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(11), pages 1-9, November.
    2. Okeke, Theodora A. & Okeibunor, Joseph C., 2010. "Rural-urban differences in health-seeking for the treatment of childhood malaria in south-east Nigeria," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 62-68, April.
    3. Boniface Ayanbekongshie Ushie & David Betelwhobel Ugal & Justin Agorye Ingwu, 2016. "Overdependence on For-Profit Pharmacies: A Descriptive Survey of User Evaluation of Medicines Availability in Public Hospitals in Selected Nigerian States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-13, November.
    4. Valeria Oliveira-Cruz & Kara Hanson & Anne Mills, 2003. "Approaches to overcoming constraints to effective health service delivery: a review of the evidence," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(1), pages 41-65.

    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:plo:pone00:0091667. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.