ABSTRACT
Background and objective: In low- and middle-income countries, pharmaceutical compounding is vital to provide high-quality healthcare service. Accordingly, this study aimed to investigate the extent status of practice and barriers to compounding services in hospital and community pharmacies of Southwest Ethiopia. Methods: A healthcare institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted from 15 September 2021 to 25 January 2022. Data were collected from 104 pharmacists using a self-administered questionnaire. The responding pharmacists were selected by purposive sampling technique. Finally, descriptive statistical methods were used for data analysis with the help of IBM SPSS Statistics V21.0. Results: A total of 104 pharmacists (27 hospital pharmacists and 77 community pharmacists) responded (response rate: 0.945). Besides providing other routine essential pharmacy services, around 93.3% of contacted pharmacies have a history of practicing compounding services. The most common practices were granule or powder reconstitution to suspensions or solutions (98.97%) and crushing tablets into smaller forms (92.8%). Commonly, compounding was requested and practiced for preparing pediatrics (97.9%) and geriatrics (96.9%) doses from adult doses, unavailable dosage forms (88.7%), and solving therapeutic gaps (86.6%). All compounding pharmacies participated in compounding antimicrobial medications. They often cited lacking skills or training (76.3%) and insufficient equipment and supplies needed for compounding (99%) as the main barriers. Conclusion and recommendation: With many facilitators, challenges, and limitations, medication compounding services remain one of the core healthcare services. Areas needing improvement include strengthening comprehensive and continuous professional development for pharmacists on compounding standards.
ABSTRACT
Background: With the problems of increasing levels of drug resistance and difficulties to afford and access effective antimalarial drugs in poor and remote areas, herbal medicines could be an important and sustainable source of treatment. Argemone mexicana L. (AM) is a medicinal plant known long ago in several countries for treatment of numerous diseases including malaria. The aim of this study was to conduct a survey on the use of AM in the prevention and treatment of uncomplicated malaria in selected districts of Jimma Zone, Oromia Regional state, Ethiopia. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in two selected districts in Jimma Zone, southwest Ethiopia. In total, 552 participants from 17 kebeles (villages/communities) and 18 traditional healers of the districts were interviewed. Data collection was conducted from April 27 to May 18, 2020 using pre-tested structured questionnaires. The data were analyzed using Epi Info 7.0 and the descriptive statistics were used to summarize the results. Results: The study indicated that AM is available, known by 39.8% of the respondents and used for prevention and treatment of malaria by 5.7% of the population. All traditional healers interviewed knew the plant, and 44.4% use it for treatment of malaria. In addition, AM is especially used to treat malaria, amoebiasis, diarrhea, cough, and tuberculosis. Conclusion: The availability and use of AM to treat malaria was verified in both community and traditional healers. AM, which was found effective as antimalarial plant in high Plasmodium falciparum endemicity in Mali, is also well known and accepted in these areas of Ethiopia for the treatment of malaria. Further research is needed to assess wether AM is also effective against malaria in Ethiopia where P. vivax and P. falciparum coexist.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic is putting a huge strain on healthcare systems and is a turning point for the beginning of a global health crisis of an unprecedented condition. As such, the provision of quality pharmacy services particularly, dispensing practice with pre-existing challenges in resource-limited settings is a grave concern in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, in this commentary we described the pattern of dispensing practice in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic by evaluating the current condition of drug dispensing practice in drug retail outlets of Jimma Town.
