DefinePK

Abstract

Private health practitioners are playing an important role in our health care system. Willingness to pay, specially paying from the pocket for seeking health care is not an exception even among the people living in squatter areas1. Private practitioners who are mainly the primary care provid­ers (colloquially called General Practitioners, GPs) though providing a valuable service but their emphasis is mainly on curative care2 and thus has a detrimental effect on primary healthcare3. They are therefore, blamed for polypharmacy and misuse or irrational use of drugs4 Studies on use of drugs4,5 have been done in many countries6,7 by INRUD (International Network for Rational Use of Drugs) to highlight this important issue. Based on these studies, "selective drugs use indicators” have been identified8. The important indicators of drug use (without taking into account the diagnosis) are: number of drugs, antibiotics and injections per prescription. This not only indicates the quality of care by the prescriber but also the economic burden on the patients, besides the aftennaths of unnecessary use of antibiotics. This study on prescribing patterns of GPs was done to identify the magnitude of problem and compare it with other studies done using the internation­ally recommended indicators.