‘Patients are prescribed too much medication’

JOHANNESBURG: When it comes to medicine, more doesn’t always mean best for patients.

In fact, a recent study of online open access journals reviewed by publisher BioMed Central found that “too many” medicines are being prescribed to patients in general, and too many antibiotics and injections are being administered in the world, particularly in Africa.

Titled “Prescribing indicators at primary healthcare centres within the WHO (World Health Organisation) African region: systematic analysis (1995-2015)”, the study, authored by researchers from Monash University as well as the University of London, noted that the WHO itself estimates more than half of all medicines are inappropriately prescribed, dispensed or sold.

“Forty-three studies conducted in 11 African countries (including SA) were included in the overall analysis. These studies presented prescribing indicators based on a total 141 323 patient encounters across 572 primary care facilities,” the study said.

Of these 359 were public and 213 private facilities.

The results from the prescribing indicators were determined by the average number of medicines prescribed per patient encounter; the percentage of medicines prescribed by generic name; the percentage of encounters with antibiotics prescribed; the percentage of encounters with injections prescribed; and the percentage of medicines prescribed from the essential medicines list.

“Prescribing indicators were generally worse in private compared with public facilities,” researchers noted.

In addition, according to researchers, on average just over three medicines were prescribed per patient.

“This was higher than the recommended value of less than two medicines. Nearly half of the patients who were served received antibiotics and a quarter were given injections.

“This exceeds the recommendations in primary care settings that health-care practitioners may only prescribe antibiotics to one in every three patients they consult with each day. Similarly, they may only prescribe an injection for one in every five patients they consult every day,” the researchers added.

They found that the implications of these findings were “far-reaching” and may include antibiotic resistance as well as exposing patients to undue risk, and creating shortages for those who do critically need the medication.