Educational Intervention to Improve the Practice of Pharmacovigilance among Traditional Medicine Practitioners in Lagos Nigeria.

Abstract

In the face of the growing usage of herbs, pharmacovigilance of herbal medicine is still in its infancy. Literatures have indicated lack of awareness as one of the major barriers to pharmacovigilance. This study evaluates the impact of an educational intervention in improving the practice of pharmacovigilance among traditional medicine practitioners (TMPs) in Lagos State. A total of 237 traditional medicine practitioners attended a one day workshop on pharmacovigilance. A pre-tested questionnaire was used to obtain baseline, immediate and one month post-intervention information on knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacovigilance among the respondents. The Paired T-Test and Analysis of Variance were used to compare the means of variables in the different phases of the study. Values of ps 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant. Mean knowledge and attitude to pharmacovigilance scores significantly improved by the end of the study from 14.4 ± 4.3 to 16.7 ± 4.8 (P = 0.003) and 4.2 ± 0.6 to 4.6 ± 0.7 (P = 0.000) respectively. Howeverthe improvementin knowledge of practice of pharmacovigilance was not sustained by the end of the study as the P value increased from 0.04 to 0.5. While educational levels of the participants significantly influenced their knowledge of pharmacovigilance (p< 0.05), gender had no significant influence (p > 0.05). The educational intervention had a positive impact on the knowledge, attitude and practice scores of the participants. However, the improvement on the practice knowledge of pharmacovigilance was not sustained at the end of the study. Continual improvement in the practice of pharmacovigilance of TMPs, through regular and aggressive educational interventions, is necessary for them to partiCipate effectively in the safety monitoring of herbal medicines.

Key words: Educational intervention, pharmacovigilance, traditional medicine practitioners.