Retrospective assessment of irrational use of antibiotics to children attending in Mekelle general hospital

Background: In the last decades, there has been an escalating consumption of antibiotics with the number of antibiotic prescriptions increasing worldwide. Since children are more vulnerable to infectious disease than adults, more antibiotics are prescribed for them. Inappropriate use of antibiotics has resulted in a major increase in the development of multi-drug resistant pathogens with great implication in terms of morbidity, mortality and costs. The objective of this study was to determine the irrational use of antibiotics prescribed for children under the age of 15 years in Mekelle general hospital. Methods: A retrospective cross sectional study was conducted. Four hundred three childrens prescriptions and corresponding cards which were recorded by the year 2012 were selected by systematic random sampling proportionally from each month in the year. Results: Of all antibiotic prescriptions reviewed, the numbers of outpatient antibiotic prescriptions were 222 (55.1%) while inpatient prescriptions were 181 (44.9%).The predefined antibiotics indicators like percentage of antibiotics prescribed, frequency of route of administration, antibiotics prescribed from Standard treatment guideline, proportion of antibiotics, cost of antibiotics per antibiotics days, incidence and antibiotics utilization ratio were determined and 141(35.1%) were treated with different antibiotics irrationally. Conclusion: The finding of this study indicated that antibiotics were prescribed irrationally. Prescriptions containing one or more antibiotics constituted 73.68% of all prescriptions and around 5.9% of encounters were treated without any diagnosis. T he study has revealed that third generation cephalosporin (ceftriaxone) has been highly prescribed in the study hospital.