Self-Medication causes half a million deaths every year in Pakistan. Doctors always warn such people to stop using medicines on their own without the recommendation of specialists and physicians.
Self-medication is the practice of taking medicines on your own to cure disease without the suggestion or recommendation of a doctor. The practice is quite common in Pakistan and it is dangerous. It is not only harmful but it can also prove to be fatal.
Many people have been observed to take some common tablets or syrups whenever they feel some pain or suffer from simple fever, without the consultation of doctors. People do not understand that wrong medicines or over-dose can leave adverse effects on their health that can even lead them to death.
In Pakistan, many health issues have been developed due to self-medication. The pain that needs no medicine is cured by a high dosage of medicines and the diseases that need high dosage medicines are tried to be cured by simple antibiotics.
People find it very easy to purchase medicines from any pharmacy on their own. Physicians and specialist doctors are not at all considered to be consulted. With the little knowledge of medicine, people use the same medicine for multiple diseases. Each medicine has its own need but the same medicines are taken to cure different causes.
Many different types of medicines are easily available in pharmacies. Those medicines have a quick impact on the human body and the person gets cured quickly. The medicine name is then spread by the word of mouth and people tell their friends and family member the advantages of the medicine. Later on, when someone they know develop a condition, they recommend that same medicine. In many situations, the same medicine recommended by the person to someone else with a different condition may leave harmful impacts on that person.
People do not go to doctors for a proper check-up. There can be many reasons behind it like more than half of the population in Pakistan is poor who cannot afford doctors. That is why they directly go to the pharmacy and buy whichever medicines they feel like. Pharmacists and medical stores are also to be blamed because they give medicine without prescription and in even worse scenarios, they recommend people some other medicines. Self-medicated people become the target of them.
Many people feel that their self-medication and polypharmacy is better than the doctor’s recommendation because they save time by not visiting a doctor and also save money by not paying for an appointment. That is why they prefer self-medication instead of consulting physicians. Such types of people suffer from severe diseases later on and run to specialists when it is too late.
Not consulting a doctor is always a bad practice and sometimes, self-medication makes people so addicted to their medicines that they cannot stay a single day without them. Pakistan needs to stop self-medication because, unfortunately, children and women are the worst affected here because their husbands self-medicate and buy whatever medicine he thinks is good for them without consulting the doctor.
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