Outcomes of the Rational Drug use Promotion in Hospital and Community, Sukhothai Province

Abstract

     Medicine is one of the four necessities of life, along with food, shelter, and clothing. Therefore, rational drug use is very important and covers both public and private hospitals, health centers, pharmacies, primary care units, and communities. This descriptive research aims to study outcoms of the rational drug use promotion in hospital and community in Sukhothai Province. There were a total of 3 brainstorming meetings and exchanges of knowledge to clarify policies and indicators, to build teams and networks at the provincial, district, and sub-district levels, to define the model area to learn, to create a technology database that can be restored, to organize a forum to exchange knowledge and track performance, to analyze problems and find solutions together, and continually plan operations. The data were analyzed as frequency and percentage.
     The results of the research revealed that most hospitals passed the indicators for the promotion of rational drug use in hospitals, including all sub-district health promotion hospitals in Sukhothai Province, with the rate of antibiotic use in upper respiratory tract infection and acute bronchitis and infectious disease in acute diarrhea passing the specified criteria. In addition, rational drug use is promoted in the community together with network partners and communities which 45.26 percent of them were surveyed to assess store standards and found illegal selling of health products at 5.99 percent. Most illegal health products sold in stores are pharmaceuticals, such as dangerous drugs, packaged drug, medicine sets, unregistered drugs and expired drugs as 82.14%, 10.27%, 4.91%, 1.79% 0.89%, respectively. Therefore, educating the public and campaigning for stores to sell legal health products as well as cooperating with all sectors in continuing to visit areas to control, supervise and enforce laws against stores that sell illegal health products will reduce the number of stores selling illegal health products, which will in turn provide sustainable public health safety.