In many rural areas of Uganda, febrile patients presenting to health facilities are prescribed both antimalarials and antibiotics, contributing to the overuse of antibiotics. We identified the prevalence and correlates of inappropriate antibiotic management of patients with confirmed malaria.
Methods
We utilized individual outpatient data from 36 health centers from January to September 2011. We identified patients who were prescribed antibiotics without an appropriate clinical indication, as well as patients who were not prescribed antibiotics when treatment was clinically indicated. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to identify clinical and operational factors associated with inappropriate case management.
Findings
Of the 45,591 patients with parasitological diagnosis of malaria, 40,870 (90%) did not have a clinical indication for antibiotic treatment. Within this group, 17,152 (42%) were inappropriately prescribed antibiotics. The odds of inappropriate prescribing were higher if the patient was less than five years old (aOR 1.96, 95% CI 1.75–2.19) and if the health provider had the fewest years of training (aOR 1.86, 95% CI 1.05–3.29). The odds of inappropriate prescribing were lower if patients had emergency triage status (aOR 0.75, 95% CI 0.59–0.96) or were HIV positive (aOR 0.31, 95% CI 0.20–0.45). Of the 4,721 (10%) patients with clinical indications for antibiotic treatment, 521 (11%) were inappropriately not prescribed antibiotics. Clinical officers were less likely than medical officers to inappropriately withhold antibiotics (aOR 0.54, 95% CI 0.29–0.98).
Conclusion
Over 40% of the antibiotic treatment in malaria positive patients is prescribed despite a lack of documented clinical indication. In addition, over 10% of patients with malaria and a clinical indication for antibiotics do not receive them. These findings should inform facility-level trainings and interventions to optimize patient care and slow trends of rising antibiotic resistance.
Citation: Means AR, Weaver MR, Burnett SM, Mbonye MK, Naikoba S, et al. (2014) Correlates of Inappropriate Prescribing of Antibiotics to Patients with Malaria in Uganda. PLoS ONE 9(2): e90179. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0090179
Editor: David Joseph Diemert, The George Washington University Medical Center, United States of America
Received: October 16, 2013; Accepted: January 27, 2014; Published: February 28, 2014
Copyright: © 2014 Means et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This work was supported through grant number 94298 to Accordia Global Health Foundation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The funder did not have any role in study design; data collection, analysis or interpretation; paper writing; or the decision to submit the paper for publication.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Read Full Article: Correlates of Inappropriate Prescribing of Antibiotics to Patients with Malaria in Uganda (PDF)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.