REASONS OF ANTIBIOTIC SELF-MEDICATION AMONG COMMUNITY PHARMACIES CUSTOMERS ADEN\YEMEN, 2022

Self-medication with antibiotic is a public health problem of great concern, that causes antibiotics  resistance that   is  a critical  problem worldwide. In Yemen, the quality of the health services  and health polices are far from satisfactory, therefore the antibiotics Self-medication is high among the population. This research  aimed to identify  the reasons, forcing  the community toward Antibiotics Self-Medication. A community-based cross-sectional study  was conducted from September till December 2022 in  community pharmacies of four randomly selected districts in Aden governates/ Yemen. A total of 655 participants were randomly selected and a structured interview questionnaire was used to collected data from the respondents through face-to-face interviews. Data were checked, cleaned, and entered to the SPSS version 23 for analysis. The most important reason that forced the participants to self-medication  with antibiotics was the cost of consultant 51.6%, followed by emergency illness ,and proximity of the pharmacy to home, comprised 47.8%, and 32.4% respectively. On the other hand, delaying of the hospital services was considered the weakest reason. Dissemination of the finding of this study about the reasons that forced the community to antibiotics self medication  is essential to policy development to help the relevant decision makers to develop regulations  about antibiotics dispensing.