Attitude towards OTC drugs consumption: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

The term OTC drugs means Over the Counter drugs which is non prescript drugs. When people needs medication they may choose prescript drugs or Over the Counter drugs depends on their choice, culture, education, environment, situation etc. A good amount of people choose Over the Counter drugs. That is why this study had conducted to identify what amount of people prefer it, why prefer it and what reason behind this selection. Another major concern of this study incudes to identify whether there is any effect of consuming Over the Counter drugs or not. Total 72 sample size had taken to conduct this study which is randomly selected where 69.4% people were male and rest of the 30.6% people were female. There were an equal chance of all to be selected as a sample. A very insane result we have found after formulate this study. We have found that the maximum consumer of OTC drugs are 18 to 26 years old people and the second highest percentage of consumers are 27 to 35 years old who were maximum either students or service holder. Another interesting result found out that total 58.3% people do not prefer Over the Counter drugs but 61.1% people purchase among them. So the question may arise why people are buying Over the Counter drugs where they do not prefer it? The answer came when we asked them some further question. The answer of those further question gave us another amazing outcome. People buy those medicine because family and situation influence them in maximum time. And emergency purpose and prior experience in self-medication also plays a vital role. When people buy those drugs 81.9% people aware about their actual problem and we found that about 62.5% times people do not face any problem while taking those over the counter drugs. Now our main concern should be on the rest of the 37.5% people who are somehow face some problem after taking Over the Counter drugs. We cannot stop buying OTC drug consumption because any emergency situation may come when we may need emergency medicine for primary treatment. So what we can do is minimize the risk. Now the question is how? A very dangerous problem people are facing now a days, that is medicines (especially antibiotics) are not working properly in the human body. The reason unplanned and over consumption of the antibiotic medicines. The access of buying those high power antibiotic is very easy in this country. So people buy those medicine from any pharmacy store without any suggestion of doctor and consume without any discipline as a result our body is losing the absorption capacity of antibiotic. What we need is to control this major sector. There can be two way we may focus. Restriction on buying non prescript antibiotic may have a good impact for solving this issue. Another one is educating people to make awareness about their health safety. Those steps may have a very impressive result on this study.