Status Survey on Family-owned Drug Storage of Rural Residents in Economically Underdeveloped Regions

Objective To understand the situation of reserve drugs,medical devices and portable medical kits of rural households in service areas of basic township health centers in economically underdeveloped areas,and to provide a reference for the design of portable medicine kits suitable for rural residents.Methods The methods of simple random and cluster sampling were used to investigate and analyze the situation of commonly used drugs,medical devices and storages of 139 rural households from 3 basic township health hospitals in Hebei,Jiangxi and Gansu provinces,respectively.Results The storage rates of commonly used drugs of rural households were cold medicine(63.3%),wound paste(40.3%),essential balm(36.7%),cooling oil(36.0%),antihypertensive(23.0%),iodine tincture(18.0%),diabetes drugs(2.2%) and other drugs(24.5%).The storage rates of medical devices were thermometer(44.6%),cotton swab(39.6%),sphygmomanometer(8.6%),injector(7.2%) and other devices(16.5%).A total of 48.9% of families stored drugs and medical devices in fixed drawers.Only 4.3% of families stored drugs and medical devices in special portable medical kits.Conclusion Rural families have a higher storage rate of household drugs in service areas of basic township health hospitals,and most drugs are non-prescription drugs.The storage rates of medical devices are not high.Only few rural households have portable medical kits.A lot of rural families place drugs and medical devices randomly.It may be a hidden danger of irrational drug use.Therefore,the education and self-management of drug utilization must be strengthened and storage rates of portable medical kits should be increased to gradually improve irrational drug utilization in rural households.