Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Towards Antibiotic Use Among the Public of Kabul City, Afghanistan
Keywords: Afghanistan, Antibiotic use, Attitudes, Antimicrobial Resistance, Knowledge, Public, Practices, Self-medication
Abdul Ghafar Sherzad
Abstract
The discovery of antibiotics was a major medical innovation, but today rising bacterial resistance is a threat to global health. As public behaviour is strongly influenced by antibiotic abuse. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate public’s knowledge, attitude, and practices toward antibiotic use in Kabul City, Afghanistan. A cross-sectional study was conducted at public and private hospitals of Kabul city, Afghanistan, from December 2023 to February 2024. A non-probability-convenient sampling technique was used to select study participants. The data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 26). In this study, a total of 385 individuals were enrolled, 40.5% were male and 59.5% were female. Of these, 82.3% had received antibiotics treatment within the 12 months prior to the study period. 39.5% had not completed their last prescribed antibiotic course. More than half (59%) reported that they had self-medicated with antibiotics, mostly for cough, fever, common cold, diarrhea, and sore throat. Almost 60.3% of participants had low knowledge towards use of antibiotics. As regards attitude 65.5% of participants had a positive attitude towards the use of antibiotic. Regarding Doctor-patient relationship, most respondents (95.8%) trusted the doctor's decision, 91% of the public trusted that doctors often take time to inform the patient during consultation how to use antibiotics, and that doctors often take time to consider whether or not to use antibiotics 90.9%. This study found that majority of the participants had poor knowledge but positive attitude towards use of antibiotics and a high proportion of inappropriate antibiotic use and self-medication. These findings have potential to empower educational campaigns to promote the prudent use of antibiotics in both community and health care settings and interventions are needed to improve health literacy and supervise antibiotics sales in retail pharmacies.
