KNOWLEDGE ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE REGARDING ANTIBIOTIC USE, A SAMPLE OF VISITORS TO PRIMARY HEALTH CARE CENTERS

Dr. Jehan Jawdat Faraj and *Dr. Ahmed Najim Manea

ABSTRACT

Background: antibiotic is any substance that has been produced by microorganisms to arrest the growth of other microorganisms in high dilution. Objectives: to estimate the proportion of knowledge, attitude appropriate belief and good behavior regarding antibiotic use and to find the association between these with participant’s socio-demographic characteristics and other study variables in primary health care centers. Design: descriptive cross- sectional study done from beginning of May 2017 to end of July 2017 collected 2 days per week, 4 hours/day during the period of study, convenient sampling (429 participants) were participated, the questionnaires were filled by distributing the paper of questionnaires among visitors in primary health care centers (P.H.C.C) and ask them to fill it, after take the verbal consent, p-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: from 429 participants (48,8%) presented with age between 18-27years, (57.3%) of them were female, (86.6%) came from urban area, (36.6%) of them were employed, (67.5%) of them were married, (39.8%) were with secondary education. (58.7%) have no relative with health job, (64.8%) presented with no visit to (P.H.C.C) during the last year, (54,5%) had appropriate knowledge, (45.5%) poor knowledge, (26,61%) had appropriate attitude, (73,4%) poor attitude, (43,9%) had poor practice and (56,1%) had appropriate practice about antibiotic use. Conclusion: This study has been found approximately half of the participants have appropriate knowledge and two thirds of them have poor attitude while approximately half of them have appropriate practice. There was significant association between knowledge and sociodemographic characteristic; there is association between attitude and residence, occupation and educational level but not with age, gender and marital status. Also there is association between behavior and age, residence, occupation and educational level but not with gender and marital status. There was strong association between knowledge and practice with other study variables, and there was association between attitude and presence of relative with health job, but not with number visits to the clinic in the last months.

Keywords: There was significant association between attitude and presence of relative with health job, but not with number visits to the clinic in the last months.