Non Compliance to Anti-Hypertensive Medications and Associated Factors in a rural population of Barabanki District, Uttar Pradesh: A Cross-sectional study

Although hypertension is one of the most prevalent health problem among adult primary care patients, but still its recognition and treatment level are quite suboptimal. The present cross-sectional study was undertaken to study the prevalence of noncompliance to anti-hypertensive medications and factors associated with it. The present crosssectional study was study was conducted in a rural population of Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh over a period of six months (December 2015 to May 2016) using a pre-designed semi structured and validated questionnaire. All known cases of hypertensive adults (≥ 18 years) were approached by a house-to-house survey with the help of village level health workers and those known hypertensive individuals who were not available on three consecutive visits were excluded from the study. Prevalence of non-compliance to anti-hypertensive medication was 12.5%. History of adverse drug reaction (p=0.01) and use of private health care facility (p=0.00) were found to be significantly associated with noncompliance. Those hypertensive subjects who gave history of any perceived side effects were about five times more prone to non-compliance (unadjusted odd ratio of 5.0,95% CI:1.3-18.2). Apart from that, those using private health care facility for health seeking were about seven times more susceptible to get non-compliant to hypertensive medication (unadjusted odd ratio of 7.4,95%CI:1.5-36.89). Prevalence of non-compliance reported in the present study is quite lower. Building a good doctor patient relationship along with integrated counselling session could help to achieve better compliance to the medications.