“I just cannot take medication for the rest of my life”: Non adherence Towards Diabetes Treatment

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Diabetes is a rapidly growing health challenge and potential epidemic across the low-and-middle-income countries. In primary health care settings, the management of diabetes is mainly by providing hypoglycemic drugs and lifestyle change. The level of adherence and compliance to the therapy is a critical element in glycaemic control. In developed countries, adherence to long-term therapies in the general population is around 50% and is much lower in developing countries. A specific trend of non compliance and non adherence towards medication was seen in patients coming to a rural primary health care facility in India. Several beliefs regarding non adherence were identified in such patients which are - Beliefs about chronic diseases in general, beliefs about long term drug intake, behavior towards diabetes medication, peers observations and switching between different treatments. There is a need to identify specific reasons for non compliance and/or non adherence so that more focused behavioral change strategies can be made for patients of chronic diseases.