Evaluación de la automedicación y factores asociados en la población adulta del sector La Libertad en la parroquia San Luis, Riobamba

Abstract

The aim of this work was to evaluate self-medication and associated factors in the adult population of the location called La Libertad in San Luis parish, Riobamba county. The research was qualitative, with a non-experimental, exploratory, descriptive, cross-sectional, bibliographic, and field design, where 381 surveys of the inhabitants of the zone, aged between 18-65, were collected, referring to two study phases, before and during the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, in April-August 2021, considering several inclusion criteria. After that, the results obtained were quantified based on the sociodemographic characteristics, projecting that there was always a high prevalence of self-medication in the population, which, with the presence of COVID-19, was evidenced from moderate to high, identifying that the female gender predominates with 80.58% and showing that the most self-medicated pharmacological groups are analgesics 35.17% to 44.09% and antibiotics 33.33% to 39.11%, it was also associated with several factors typical of the zone such as the precarious economic situation, high demand for pharmacies and lack of control of regulatory entities on medicine dispensing which have been contributing to maintain prevalence. In the sanitary socializations, 75% of those surveyed stated that they will almost always use this practice, alluding that it will be the last resource used to mitigate a pathology due to the importance of the information received. Therefore, it is concluded that self-medication is a widespread problem of high prevalence, and even more, with the pandemic it becomes acute because of different causes, which must be suppressed with hard teamwork between the population and government health systems. Therefore, it is suggested to visit the nearest health center in the presence of any symptomatology for its corresponding medical diagnosis.