Drug usage habits of people in Adana

Aim: Non-rational usage of drug is very important problem of all countries. Also in our country, non-rational usage of drug is a serious problem and enhance the percent of medical cost in the general health payments. The present study was applied to identify the habituation and the incidence of drug usage in Adana, and then to form a database about this subject.Material and Methods: We planned to conduct a survey with 1222 people in Adana. We used the telephone numbers belong to Turkish Telecom center in Adana. We could poll our questionnaire related with national usage of drug on 1111 people who accepted the telephone survey.Results: The percent of women we interviewed was 63,5 %. The age mean of the women was 42,71 ± 14,1 and the age mean of the men was 41,67 ± 15,8. The majority of the participants was the people who have primary school graduate, housewife and younger than 25 years old. 15,5 % of the participants had no any benefit primary and 57,2 % of the participants said that they are applying self-medication. 625 out of 635 people (98,4 %) who haven?t gone to doctor said that they used analgesics and antipyretics. 8 % of the participants said that they used the drugs according to their relatives, their friends or their neighbors. 14,9 % of the participants said that they also suggested some drugs to them. The most suggested drugs were analgesics. 30,5 % of the participants said that they used antibiotic before going to any doctor when they had the flu. 47,9 % said that they left to use the antibiotics earlier. 85,8 % said that they noticed the expiration date of the drugs. 28,9 % indicated that they had prescribed to have in stock at home. Nearly half of the participants said that they chucked out the drugs which expired.Conclusions: We evaluated the answers of the all participants to the questionnaire according to rational usage of drug scores. We determined the mean score as 68,37%. This result may suggest that the people in Adana have no enough knowledge about rational usage of drug. This results also indicate that these people must been trained about this subject.Key Words: Adana, Rational usage of drug, Telephone survey.