Antimicrobial use in paediatric patients in a teaching hospital in Ethiopia

Abstract

Antibiotics use in in children are different from adults due to a lack of data on pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, efficacy and safety of drugs, different physiological spectrum, pediatrics populations being vulnerable to the majority of the illnesses, and the adverse effect of their irrational use is more serious. However, antibiotic use is not explored much in a paediatric population. The current study focused on antibiotic use among pediatric population using data from a tertiary hospital in Ethiopia. Methods A retrospective cross-sectional study collated data from 614 pediatrics patients admitted in pediatrics ward at Jimma University Teaching Hospital, Southwest Ethiopia. Descriptive analyses were performed to describe the type and pattern of antibiotics. The number of prescriptions per a patient was also compared with the WHO standard. Data analysis was carried out using SPSS version 20 for mackintosh. Results Antimicrobials were prescribed for 407(86.4%) patients of which 85.9% were in the form of injectables. A total of 1241 (90%) medicines were administered parenterally followed by oral 110 (8%). The maximum number of medicines per prescription was eight for all types of drugs in general, and five for antimicrobials in particular. All antimicrobials were prescribed empirically without any microbiological evidence. Pneumonia, sepsis and meningitis were the main reasons for antimicrobial use in the ward. Out of the total of 812 antibiotics prescribed; Penicillin G crystalline was the most (20%) frequently prescribed, followed by gentamicin (19%) and ampicillin (16). Conclusions Majority of the prescribed antibiotics were antimicrobials, and was in the form of injectables. Antimicrobials were over prescribed and the number of drugs per prescription was also far PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0173290 March 6, 2017 1 / 8 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Kebede HK, Gesesew HA, Woldehaimanot TE, Goro KK (2017) Antimicrobial use in paediatric patients in a teaching hospital in Ethiopia. PLoS ONE 12(3): e0173290. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0173290 Editor: Imti Choonara, University of Nottingham, UNITED KINGDOM Received: August 10, 2016 Accepted: February 17, 2017 Published: March 6, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Kebede et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: The dataset supporting the conclusions of this article is included within the article. Funding: This research was funded by Jimma University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.from WHO recommendation. Strict prescribing standard guidelines and treatment habits should be developed in the country, to prevent antimicrobial resistance