A STUDY ON ANTIBIOTICS SELF MEDICATION AMONG UNDERGRADUATES OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, OWERRI, IMO STATE

ABSTRACT Self-medication has been described as the use of medications for therapeutic purpose but without professional advice or prescription. The undergraduates of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State are not immune to the numerous hazards and risks posed by antibiotic self medication and as such this study is aimed at evaluating the prevalence, practices, and underlying determinants of antibiotic self-medication among FUTO undergraduates to develop evidence-based mitigation strategies to curtail the trend. The study was cross sectional. The sample size was 121 undergraduates drawn through simple random sampling. Data was collected from the respondents using a structured, self administered questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS (statistical package for social sciences) version 21. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages were used to analyze categorical variables and presented in tables. The study found the rate of antibiotics self medication among undergraduates of the Federal University of Technology Owerri to be 73.6% high corroborating a similar study done in south west Nigeria which also discovered a high prevalence rate of 91.4% among university students. The study also discovered time saving (33.0%) as the major reason for antibiotics self medication practice while amoxicillin (amoxil) (25.6%) was the main antibiotics used in self medication. In addition, more than half of the respondents (57.9%) were aware that self medication with antibiotics is hazardous. In conclusion, self medication with antibiotics is very high among the undergraduates despite their high level of knowledge on its hazards. Therefore, the study recommends that health care should be made readily available and accessible to the students and time wasting at the University hospital should be avoided. Keywords: Antibiotic Self-Medication; Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR); Public Health; Undergraduate Health; Amoxicillin; Nigeria.