Background: Self-medication is defined as the selection and use of non-prescribed medicine or left-over medicine from previous prescription or sharing of medicine with relatives/friend by individuals to treat self-recognized conditions or symptoms.
Objectives: Study was aimed at determining the proportional of self-medication and its associated factors among high school students at Nyamagana district. More specifically to determine the proportion of self-medication, factors associated with self-medication and to determine common medicine used by high school students for self-medication.
Methodology: This cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study was conducted among high school students from five high schools found at Nyamagana district, Mwanza, Tanzania. 354 respondents selected by multistep sampling were involved and data were filled to excel and analyzed using SPSS version 20.
Results: Total of 354 high school students participated, out of which 48.0% were female and 52.0% were male. Out of 354 participants, 8.8% responded not to have any disease for past year or recent months and 91.2% responded to have disease(s) in past year or recently months. Among 323 responded to have disease(s), 58.2% responded of self-medication themselves with common factor being past experience of uses of medicine 58.5%. The most common medicine was ALU 17.4%.
Conclusion: Self-medication was slightly high among high school students; So It’s responsibility of health care professionals and drug regulatory authorities to ensure the safe use of drugs and control the exercise of self-medication practice by describing the total impact of the drugs on the body to the students or general population through either mass media or mass education programs.
Wurzburg Road 35, BMC Premises, Post Code: 33102: P. O. Box 1464, Mwanza – Tanzania: Phone: +255 28 298 3384: Fax: +255 28 298 3386: Email: vc@bugando.ac.tz : www.bugando.ac.tz