Abstract

Background: Defect of use of antibiotics is bothering pediatricians. This defect is participating in the prevalence of one of global health problem called antibiotic Resistance. Many articles are supporting the idea that use of antibiotics is positively related to antibiotic resistance and this problem is increasing and growing up. By the way, incorrect use of antibiotics has many factors that contribute on, like patient attitude and deficiency of education from the physician who prescribed the antibiotic. Also, patient's knowledge and practice with the antibiotic like self-prescription. What is patient expecting from antibiotic and previous experience with antibiotics? Parents are responsible to give medications to children. So, we need to increase parents' knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) toward antibiotics to reach new generation without antibiotic resistance. Regarding Saudi Arabia, antibiotic resistance already exists and the rate of resistance is increased in the last decade. Aim of the work: To assess how parents are aware of antibiotics those given to their children by evaluating knowledge, attitude, and practice of parents in Riyadh region, central Saudi Arabia. Methods: This is questionnaire based cross-sectional study. Authors were circulating on Riyadh Region to find volunteers to fill questionnaires among parents of children in public places by selecting parents of children up to 12 years old by choosing random samples from each place. The questionnaire has two parts: the first part, as usual, is containing demographic data. While the second part: is the part that is evaluating KAP of parents towards antibiotics. Then we compared the final results by Chi-Square test and p-values less than 0.05 was considered as significant value. Results: around 1058 parents volunteered to participate in this study (response rate was 88.16%) by mean age of 38. Around 89.6% used antibiotics for their children before. There are 9.5% of parents were believe that their children need antibiotics each time they get sick. More than 35% of our participants don’t complete period of antibiotic use to their child as what is mentioned on prescription. About 82.3% believe that antibiotics can harm children. There are 41.7% of parents bought antibiotics to their children from the previous prescription. Around 61.1% don’t know the term antibiotic resistance. There are 28.4% of participants could change their doctors if they don't prescribe antibiotics easily, while only 642(60.7%) could change their doctors if they prescribe antibiotics excessively. About 68.1% of participants believe that doctors prescribe antibiotics excessively. Nearly 49% have good KAP, 41% of participants have intermediate KAP and remaining 10% have poor KAP. Females are better than male in KAP, people with high degree education are better than other and parents who used antibiotics before are better than those who didn’t (p-value < 0.05). Conclusion: Level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of people in Riyadh region is ranging between good to moderate, and tends to be good. We can expect antibiotics resistance to happen among new generation in Riyadh region. There is an unacceptable idea that is highly prevalent among parents that doctors excessively prescribe antibiotics. Moreover, mothers have better awareness than fathers. People with high degree level of education have better awareness than others.

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