Prescription pattern among primary care providers in catholic-church-owned primary health care facilities in Northern Ecclesiastical provinces of Abuja, Jos and Kaduna, Nigeria: Preliminary findings

Prescribing practicing profile impacts greatly on rational drug use, case management outcome and health care cost. Poor prescription practice has been shown to be associated with high cost, side effects and proven lack of desired pharmaceutical benefit. The purpose of the present study was to analyse the patterns of prescriptions using WHO core drug use indicators and some additional indices with a view for identifying intervention strategies. A retrospective cross-sectional review of 2,510 prescriptions issued to patients and randomly selected from 20 Catholic Church-owned primary health care facilities in the Northern provinces of Abuja, Jos and Kaduna between January and December, 2006 were studied. The average number of drugs per prescription was 5.49 (range: 3.10 – 7.20). Drug prescription in generic name and from the PHC essential drug list was 61.29 and 66.96% respectively. Injection and antibiotic prescription rates were 60.96% and 76.49% respectively, while in 58.96% were diagnosis made. These facilities were characterised by poly-pharmacy, inappropriate injection and antibiotic prescription, poor prescription in generic names as well as poor use of essential drug list, and these were widespread. Capacity building programme on appropriate drug prescription and the institutional use of appropriate standard treatment guidelines and drug formularies are therefore advocated.