Self-Assessed Health and Self-Medication: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices among Parents of Primary School Children

Self-rated health has widely been used as an indicator of health status in social health policy research that independently predicts morbidity and mortality. A total of 253 respondents out of 560 minimum reported once, or trice or thrice self-medication within six months of recall period. Most common conditions/symptoms for self-medication were analgesics (77.93%) antiallergics (30.6%), antibiotics (17.2%) and decongestants (52.66%), whereas only half of the respondents never gave their children medicaments without doctor’s prescription, 24% declared medicament without prescription once, 19% 2-3 times and 2.3% for more than 3 times. Over the counter drugs (60%) was the most common category of drugs used by all respondents. Our study evaluated Self-rated health and self-medication knowledge, attitudes, and practices of parents of primary school children. The questionnaire was distributed to the parents in electronic form. The sample consisted of 560 parents. The correlation between Self-rated health and self-medication and demographic characteristics of parents has been sought and highlighted. Selfmedication (including use of antibiotics) is a major global problem and can lead to serious consequences for healthcare systems.