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DETERMINANTS OF PRESCRIBING FOR THE ELDERLY IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE |
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| Almost one
third of patients are on three or more medications. Type: Forty five percent of elderly patients are on drugs for Diabetes, 34% of patients on drugs for hypertension, 11% of patients on drugs for musculoskeletal and joints disease mainly non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs NSAID, 4% of patients on drugs for gastrointestinal tract GIT mainly antacids and ulcer healing drugs (Table 5) .Of the above medications 35% were prescribed by physicians in PHC center, 43% by physicians in both hospital and PHC center and 22% by physicians in other places. Sources: The sources from which elderly patients in the study get their medications were PHC center (61 percent) hospital (8 percent); both hospital and PHC center (30 percent) and only 1% of patients get their medications from other places. Indicating that PHC center is the main source of medications. Availability: On questioning these elderly patients about availability of their medications 5% of patients indicated that their medications are always not available in PHC center, 70% of patients indicated that their medications are some times available in PHC center, while 25% of patients indicated that their medications are always available in PHC center. Discussion: This study has shown that the health care for the majority of elderly patients is provided by PHC center that agree with previous publications (8) . More than half the sample size had two or more diseases with endocrine and metabolic the commonest encountered diseases, which is expected in this age group. The prevalence of diabetes is known to increase with age; therefore it is not an unexpected finding in this study that diabetes mellitus was at the top of the list of metabolic diseases seen in elderly patients. This also explains why the medications for diabetes were the most common drugs used by elderly in PHC. |
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