Prevalence and factors influencing self-medication in Medina Al-Munawara, Saudi Arabia

Background: The exact definition of self-medication is "the selection and usage of certain medication by individuals to treat self-recognized disease and symptomatology. This practice might influence health care institutes toward this point. This behavior might have certain adverse effects like wastage of resourced and missing of hazardous diagnosis. Objectives: To assess the Prevalence, current knowledge, and attitude towards self -medication among the population attending primary health care centers in Medina city after MOH Ministerial Warns against Selling Antibiotics without prescription and to examine self -medication associated risk factors among the studied population. Subjects and methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Medina City, Saudi Arabia during November 2019. A multistage, stratified random sampling procedure was used. The data was collected by a structured interview questionnaire. Data collection was done through interviews with the participated subjects by the researcher himself. Results: The response rate was 91.75 % (367/4000. The self-medication's prevalence among the studied population was 74.7%.  The common complaints of self-medication were headache and body aches (47.1%), flu and cough (24.4%), and sore throat (9%). The most common type of drugs used as self-medication was antipyretics (55%), analgesic (51.2%), decongestants (20.7%) and antibiotics (15.3%), Regarding reasons of self-medication, minor illness (47.4%), saving time & money  (15.3%), 31 avoid crowding at PHC (11 .3%), previous good experience with the drug (7.7%), high cost of consultations (5.5%) and emergency (4.4%) were the common Uses. Conclusion: There is a considerable high proportion of self-medication among the Saudi population in Medina city y. The most common self- medication used by the studied sample was the antipyretics. The study findings showed the effect of law that prohibits the purchase of antibiotics without prescription indicating the importance of generalization of the prohibition of all prescription drugs.