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Abstract
The present work was conducted to study the prevalence, factors affecting and sources of information about use of antibiotics without prescription in family health centres in Shebin El-Kom, Menoufyia Interviewing personal history in addition to pre-designed< questionnaire about the non-prescriped antibiotics in patients attending the four family health centres in Shebin El-Kom in the time frame from the first of January 2010 to the last of March of the year 2010 In this work, of the 3275 participants, 795 (24%) were using antibiotics over the study period: 170 (21%) of them were selfmedicating with antibiotics and 625 (79%) had antibiotics prescribed for treatment This study revealed a considerable rate of self-medication, which should drive the attention of the authorities to this problem. Educational programs for the general public should be initiated and the physicians should instruct their patients not to use the prescribed medications for upcoming conditions, but for the current ones Also, attention should be focused on the practice of selling antibiotics without prescription, as this might pose a hazard to the population health due to the development of bacterial resistance Penalties should be imposed on the pharmacists who violate such laws It was found that the rate of non prescriped antibiotics is< significantly affected by the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants ( age , gender, education, etc.. Regarding antibiotic used without prescription , penicillin is the most commonly used (48.23 %) at family health centers followed by cephalosporins (17.64 %).Also, The majority of self-medicated participants (48.82%) used antibiotics for 3 days, while 34.11% used them for 4-7 days and only 11.17 % continued treatment for more than seven days , however the least was 5.88 % for more than 15 days Moreover, The survey results indicated that the participants relied mainly on their previous experience with the medication, and on leaflets To a lesser extent, they made use of the information available in leaflets advice from physician consultation and pharmacist Also, The analysis of questionnaire data showed that the main source of antibiotic supply were the previously prescribed antibiotics stored in the pharmacist (44.70) or stored as household (25.29) . But the least from physician (1.17 It can be concluded that inappropriate self medication with antibiotics appears to be common, signifying the need for carefully designed antibiotic educational campaigns to emphasize the uses and limitations of these medications, and to make the public aware of their negative effects, especially with respect to self-medication. This campaign should target the whole community.