M. MALIK & col
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coded and analyzed using statistical software SPSS version 16. Descriptive
statistics (frequencies and percentages) were used to describe trends in the
current prescribing practices. Kruskal-‐Wallis test (p ≤ 0.05) was used to compare
the adherence of prescribers with standard malaria regimen having different
designations and level of experiences. While Mann Whitney test (p ≤ 0.05) was
used to compare the adherence of prescribers with standard treatment regimen
for malaria practicing in public and private healthcare facilities in the two cities.
3. RESULTS
A total of 600 malaria cases were collected and analyzed. Out of 600
encounters, 50 % (n=300) were collected from public and 50 % (n=300) were
from private tertiary healthcare facilities.
The mean age of the malaria patients in the encounters was 35.00 years
(± 14.04), ranging from 20 to 60 years while 68.3% (n=410) of the patients were
males and remaining 31.7% (n=190) were females.
Of the total prescriptions, 34.3 % (n= 206) were prescribed by house
officers (fresh MBBS graduate acquiring training in medical fertinity), 57.7 % (n =
346) were by medical officers (Medical graduate with at least experience of more
than one year) and remaining 8 % (n = 48) were by specialists (Medical graduate
with expertise in a specific field of medical fertinity).
It was observed that 20.2 % (n = 121) of the prescribers had working
experience of less than one year, 40.7 % (n = 244) had working experience of 1-‐5
years, 23.7 % (n = 142) had working experience of 6-‐10 years and 15.5 % (n = 93)
had working experience of more than 10 years. Of the total prescribers, 85 % (n=
510) were not aware regarding national standard treatment guidelines for malaria,
90 % (n = 540) have never seen them in their health facilities for reference and
98.3 % (n = 590) had never received any training on standard treatment guidelines
for malaria (Table 2).
The mean number of drugs per encounter was 2.37 (± 0.557), ranging from
1 to 5 drugs per encounter while mean number of antibiotics and injections per
encounter were 0.32 (± 0.513) and 0.23 (± 0.470), ranging from 1 to 2 antibiotics
and injections per encounter respectively. Diagnosis was written on 37.2% (n =
226), of the prescriptions while results of Malarial Parasite (MP) test was
mentioned in only 9.2 % (n= 55) of the cases. In 29.1% (n= 175) of the cases
antibiotics and in 21.6% (n= 126) of the cases injections were prescribed.
Drugs were prescribed by their generic names in only 3% (n= 18) of the
cases. While dose of the anti-‐malarial drugs was not calculated as per patient body
weight in any of the encounters. The most commonly prescribed anti-‐malarial
drugs were chloroquine phosphate 11 % (n= 66), artemether/lumefantrine 17.4 %
