Community pharmacists’ knowledge towards the treatment of cough: a cross-sectional survey in Ibb city, Yemen

Abdulkawi Ali Al-Fakih¹, Zakaria Abdullah Qasem Al-Awadhi², Yazeed Ali Musleh Algahim^3
1Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Ibb University, Ibb, Yemen.
²Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Allied Medical Sciences, Aljazeera University, Ibb, Yemen.
3Department of Pharmacy, Lebanese International University, Taiz, Yemen.

A B S T R A C T
Cough is a common reflex action in the respiratory tract and seen in many medical conditions. This is a cross-sectional survey performed in Ibb city, Yemen. Sixty-one of community pharmacists, who works in community pharmacies, were randomly selected for this study. The community pharmacists who were asking the patient about the age, duration of cough, type of cough, medications taken by patients, following up the pharmacist if cough not recovered through 7 days, presence of pregnancy or lactation, presence of fever, and presence of asthma with cough, were 75.5, 65, 74.8, 36.1, 23, 32.3, 47, and 23%, respectively. Only 62% of the participants referred the patients to specialists. In addition, high percentages of community pharmacists in the study area dispensed antibiotics and corticosteroids to adults and children (<6 years) as OTC medicines, codeine-containing cough medicine, and cough medicines for patients having chronic diseases (e.g. diabetes mellitus, heart disease, and hypertension). With respect to the adherence of medication dosage, only 35% of pharmacists told the patients about medication dosage. According to the results of the present study, high percentages of the study sample neglected certain important aspects of cough treatment, such as age, types of cough, duration of cough, and presence of pregnancy, lactation, fever, and infections. This might negatively affect the role of community pharmacists in the treatment of patients having cough.
Keywords: Community Pharmacists, Knowledge, Cough, Treatment.