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Health-Related Quality of Life among Nonprescription Medicine Customers in Malaysia

Shafie AA, Hassali MA, Mohamad Yahaya AH

Value Health Reg Issues, 2013 May;2(1):107-117.
PMID: 29702838 DOI: 10.1016/j.vhri.2013.02.005

OBJECTIVE: To describe the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among nonprescription medicine customers in Malaysia and the factors that affect it.
METHODS: A nationwide cross-sectional survey was conducted among pharmacy customers in 59 randomly selected community pharmacies in Malaysia. The self-administered questionnaire included the EuroQoL five-dimensional (EQ-5D) questionnaire, the EuroQol visual analogue scale (EQ-VAS), nonprescription medicines purchase, and demographic questions. Data were analyzed by using the multivariate analysis of variance and multiple logistic regressions.
RESULTS: A total of 2729 customers enrolled in this study, with a mean EQ-5D questionnaire score of 0.92±0.15 and a mean EQ-VAS score of 69.92±24.80. Compared with the Malaysian adult population, nonprescription medicine customers have a lower mean EQ-5D questionnaire score (t =-4.49, P<0.01) and EQ-VAS score (t =-25.87, P<0.01). We found that pain/discomfort (25.6%) and anxiety/depression (13.7%) were the major HRQOL problems. Locality, age, ethnicity, household income per month, type of occupation, and type of nonprescription medicine purchased were associated with health status of nonprescription medicine customers (F22,5286 = 2.555; Wilks' lambda = 0.979; P< 0.01).
CONCLUSIONS: The HRQOL of nonprescription medicine customers is lower than that of the general Malaysian population. Lower health status was independently associated with older age, living in rural areas, having low income and education level, and purchasing blood and blood-forming medicines from community pharmacy.
Fulltext Does educational intervention improve doctors' knowledge and perceptions of generic medicines and their generic prescribing rate? A study from Malaysia

Hassali MA, Wong ZY, Alrasheedy AA, Saleem F, Mohamad Yahaya AH, Aljadhey H

SAGE Open Med, 2014;2:2050312114555722.
PMID: 26770747 DOI: 10.1177/2050312114555722

To investigate the impact of an educational intervention on doctors' knowledge and perceptions towards generic medicines and their generic (international non-proprietary name) prescribing practice.
Fulltext Patterns and predictors of non-prescription medicine use among Malaysian pharmacy patrons: a national cross sectional study

Hassali MA, Mohamad Yahaya AH, Shafie AA, Saleem F, Chua GN, Aljadhey H

PLoS One, 2013;8(4):e59231.
PMID: 23573195 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059231

The study aims to evaluate the predictors of non-prescription medicine purchasing patterns among pharmacy patrons in Malaysia.
Perspectives of physicians practicing in low and middle income countries towards generic medicines: a narrative review

Hassali MA, Wong ZY, Alrasheedy AA, Saleem F, Mohamad Yahaya AH, Aljadhey H

Health Policy, 2014 Sep;117(3):297-310.
PMID: 25129135 DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2014.07.014

This review was conducted to document published literature related to physicians' knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of generic medicines in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and to compare the findings with high-income countries.
Fulltext A comparison between antibiotic utilisation in public and private community healthcare in Malaysia

Lim AH, Ab Rahman N, Nasarudin SNS, Velvanathan T, Fong MCC, Mohamad Yahaya AH, et al.

BMC Public Health, 2024 Jan 03;24(1):79.
PMID: 38172715 DOI: 10.1186/s12889-023-17579-3

BACKGROUND: There are two parallel systems in Malaysian primary healthcare services: government funded public primary care and privately-owned practices. While there have been several studies evaluating antibiotic utilisation in Malaysian public healthcare, there is a lack of literature on the use of antibiotics in the private sector. There is a dire need to evaluate the more recent performance of public vs. private community healthcare in Malaysia. As such, this study aimed at measuring and comparing the utilisation of antibiotics in the public and private community healthcare sectors of Malaysia in 2018-2021.
METHODS: This study was a retrospective analysis of antibiotic utilisation in Malaysian primary care for the period of 1 January 2018 until 31 December 2021 using the nationwide pharmaceutical procurement and sales data from public and private health sectors. Rates of antibiotic utilisation were reported as Defined Daily Doses per 1000 inhabitants per day (DID) and stratified by antibiotic classes. The secondary analysis included proportions of AWaRe antibiotic category use for each sector and proportion of antibiotic utilisation for both sectors.
RESULTS: The overall national antibiotic utilisation for 2018 was 6.14 DID, increasing slightly to 6.56 DID in 2019, before decreasing to 4.54 DID in 2020 and 4.17 DID in 2021. Private primary care antibiotic utilisation was almost ten times higher than in public primary care in 2021. The public sector had fewer (four) antibiotic molecules constituting 90% of the total antibiotic utilisation as compared to the private sector (eight). Use of Access antibiotics in the public sector was consistently above 90%, while use of Access category antibiotics by the private sector ranged from 64.2 to 68.3%. Although use of Watch antibiotics in the private sector decreased over the years, the use of Reserve and 'Not Recommended' antibiotics increased slightly over the years.
CONCLUSION: Antibiotic consumption in the private community healthcare sector in Malaysia is much higher than in the public sector. These findings highlight the need for more rigorous interventions targeting both private prescribers and the public with improvement strategies focusing on reducing inappropriate and unnecessary prescribing.