Prevalence of antibiotic self-medication behavior and related factors among children aged 0 to 5 years

ABSTRACT

Background: Self-medication behavior has great adverse effects on children. The aims of this study were to assess the prevalence of self-medication with antibiotics (SMA) among children aged 0–5 years and explore the related factors.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted from 1 July 2019 to 31 July 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province (Central China). A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 1188 parents of children aged 0–5 years on sociodemographic characteristics, SMA among children, antibiotic knowledge and health beliefs of SMA.

Results: Of the 1188 participants, 14.32% had self-medicated their children with antibiotics in the past 6 months. The higher the degree of perceived threat (OR = 0.94, 95%CI: 0.89–1.00) and self-efficacy (OR = 0.94, 95%CI: 0.89–0.98), the less likely parents were to self-medicate their children. On the contrary, the higher the degree of perceived barriers, the more likely parents were to self-medicate their children with antibiotics (OR = 1.058, 95%CI: 1.01–1.11).

Conclusions: Health beliefs of parents were significantly associated with SMA among children. In addition to extensive health education, the Chinese government should also improve the accessibility and quality of health services to reduce the barriers of parental behavior change.

KEYWORDS:

• Antibiotic
• children
• health beliefs
• self-medication

Article highlights

• Self-medication with antibiotics among children is a critical concern of public health, which is a major driving factor to antibiotic resistance.

• Parents play an important role in the self-medication among children,

• We drew the health belief model into this study. Health beliefs of parents were significantly associated with self-medication with antibiotics among children.

• Parents who reserved antibiotics at home, as well as those who purchased antibiotics without prescription, were more likely to self-medicate their children.

• A well-designed health education campaign for parents is needed to reduce self-medication among children.

• The Chinese government should improve accessibility to and the quality of health services to reduce the obstacles parents encounter when seeking health care.

Acknowledgments

We especially thank all the participants who kindly devoted their time to the study.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Author contributions

XY contributed to the conception and design of the study. JW conducted the data analysis and drafted the manuscript. HY, GZ and KM contributed to the interpretation of results and revised the manuscript. JF and JW contributed to the acquisition of data.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No·71874060).