The Potential Impact of Self-medication and Drug Misuse Practice Among Youth Population in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

Self-medication refers to the act of medicating oneself with no guidance from a physician. There are sevral factors that promote self-medication along with drug misuse among the population. In the frame of developing countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), these factors include lack of enforcement of laws governing the pharmaceutical sector, poor mindset of the population as well as easy access to drugs without official medical prescriptions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which self-medication and drug misuse practices affect the youth Congolese population health in the DRC’s capital city, Kinshasa. Three sectors of Kinshasa were selected for a cross-sectional study conducted for five months (January to Mai 2020). Pharmacists or their auxiliairies were asked to draw up the list of ten drugs often purchased without medical prescriptions. In each of the selected pharmacies, 3 patients using self-medication were interviewed. A total of 120 phrarmacists or their auxiliairies and 360 patients (180 men and 180 women) were selected using systematic random sampling technique. Of the 120 questionnaires completed, a list of ten most used drugs in self-medication was established in the following dicreasing quantitative order: 106, 85, 83, 66, 66, 58, 51, 38, 29 and 23 pharmacists or their auxiliairies cited Amoxicillin capsule, Emergency Contraceptive Pill tablet, Paracetamol tablet, Dexamethasone tablet, Cyproheptadine tablet, Tetracyclin capsule, Levamisole tablet, Albendazole tablet, Quinine and Diclofenac injectables, respectively. Out of 360 questionnaires distributed, all medicines were administered by the route recommended by the physician except Dexamethasone tablet, Cyproheptadine tablet and Diclofenac injection where in 30.1%, 38.1% and 89.7% of self-medication cases the route of administration was other than the recommended route. From the recorded data, the age of most patients varied between 15-24 years old. Girls were more in self-medication than boys. Sometimes, the disease for which the drug was used, as well as the dosing, were found to be different from the instructions in patients’ leaflet. And lastly, for most patients, the main source of information was family and/or friends. This study demonstrated that the practice of self-medication is very widespread in Kinshasa, unfortunately even antibiotics are misused, exposing the population to high risk of antimicrobial resistance development. The present findings encourage further investigations at national level to better advise the dicision makers to take appropriate measures to substantially mitigate self-medication and drug misuse practices.