Indicators for the rational use of medicines are those that are regularly monitored in public health facilities. These indicators have improved over the years since awareness was created, but even so some of the indicators have not done as well as expected.
Even though the Food and Drugs Board have standards for labelling this is not adhered to in public health facilities hence the adequacy of labelling is a far cry from the standard. There is need to enforce labelling standards.
The inadequacy of patients' knowledge on how to take drugs at certain public health facilities could stem from the clarity of the message given, the compactness of the message and the presentation of the message. All these can affect the dispensing time, and considering the fact that there are always a lot of patients waiting at public health facility dispensaries for the medication, the dispensing times can be compromised. This situation even gets worse when the patients start quarrelling that they have been waiting for too long at the dispensary. This is not to find an excuse for the lack of clients' knowledge on how to take their medication at public health facilities. The still remains that if clients do not have adequate knowledge on their medications then all the efforts that is being put into getting patients better is going to waste. There is need for dispensers to have time to collect feedback on messages given to patients to see their understanding of the information given them.
The Standard Treatment Guidelines (STG) and the Essential Medicines Lists were found to be widely available in public health facilities but then the results obtained from prescribing according to the STG did not match the availability of the documents in the facilities. This shows that even though the documents have been widely circulated they are not being used effectively because of the lack of enforcement. The bearing is that the drugs and therapeutics committees in the facilities are not executing their duties efficiently if even they exist. It is necessary to investigate why these documents which cost so much money are not being adhered to and develop interventions to address the poor adherence to the STG.
