Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the prescription pattern of clinicians in private health care facilities in Kano, Northwestern Nigeria. Methods: One thousand prescriptions from ten private health facilities in Kano were evaluated retrospectively using WHO prescribing indicators. Results: Average number of drugs per encounter in these health facilities was 3.20. Generic prescribing was low at 55.40% while encounters with antibiotic prescription were high at 43.80%. About 91.20% of prescribed drugs were listed in the national essential drug list while 83.30% of the drugs for treatment of common health problems were available in these facilities. Nearly 18% of encounters had at least one injection prescribed while antihypertensives, analgesics, antimalarials, vitamins and anxiolytics were prescribed in 11.80%, 61.30%, 30.20%, 21.50% and 12.30% of encounters, respectively. Conclusions: Polypharmacy, overuse of antibiotics and injections, and low rate of generic prescribing occur in private health facilities in Kano. Therefore, there is a need to draw attention to the educational intervention.

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