{"id":6353,"date":"2019-11-04T15:19:50","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T12:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6353"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:39","slug":"beware-you-could-be-taking-expired-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/04\/beware-you-could-be-taking-expired-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware, You Could Be Taking Expired Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Gatonye Gathura<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many patients are\nbeing prescribed excessive medicines as hospitals offload near-expiry stocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A recent survey\namong 21,913 patients in Nairobi recorded huge over-prescriptions especially of\nantibiotics &#8211; well over and above recommended levels. One of the reasons for\nthe over-prescription, the report says was for health facilities to offload\nnear-expiry medicines and improve on revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen it comes to\nprivate clinics, you also have other goals . . . you have target revenues,\u201d\nsaid a medical doctor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Researchers analysed\nmobile phone data in the donor supported M-TIBA programme where majority of\nhospital visits were due to respiratory tract infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These infections\nincluded common cold, bronchitis, tonsillitis and other conditions some not\nnormally recommended for antibiotics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&nbsp;High degrees<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the study\npublished recently in the journal&nbsp;Plos One&nbsp;shows antibiotics\nprescriptions rates for respiratory infections going up to 99.8 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThese high degrees\nof prescription surpass levels recommended by national and international\nstandard treatment guidelines,\u201d says the study by Dutch researchers and the\nGertrude\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital, Nairobi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The eight-month\nstudy, analysed 36,210 visits at four clinics in Nairobi involving 21,913\npatients with 85,484 prescriptions. It indicates only a few of the treatments\nwere supported by comprehensive laboratory tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Official treatment\nguidelines recommend no antibiotics for infections such as common cold and\nbronchitis, a major cause of hospital visits in Kenya. In this study, the\nantibiotic amoxicillin constituted nearly one-third 7,061 or 32.3 per cent of\ntotal antibiotic drug prescriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.standardmedia.co.ke\/health\/article\/2001347765\/beware-you-could-be-taking-expired-medicine\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Gatonye Gathura Many patients are being prescribed excessive medicines as hospitals offload near-expiry stocks. A recent survey among 21,913 patients in Nairobi recorded huge over-prescriptions especially of antibiotics &#8211;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}