Evaluation of rational use of veterinary drugs especially antimicrobials and anthelmintics in Bishoftu, Central Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Rational use of drugs in veterinary medicine has numerous benefits, such as increasing efficacy, decreasing the potential adverse effects, reducing risk of drug residue and combating development of microorganism’s drug resistance. METHODS: A retrospective study with the aim of evaluating the current rational use of veterinary drugs was conducted at college of veterinary medicine and agriculture veterinary teaching hospital and Ada district veterinary clinic, central Ethiopia. One thousand eight hundred and nineteen animal patients’ encounters were randomly selected for the study from prescription papers and prescription registration books retrospectively. RESULTS: The average number of drugs prescribed per encounter was 1.23 with maximum of five. The percentage of encounters in which antimicrobials and anthelmintics was prescribed were 54.4 % (1216/2235) and 38.9 % (869/2235), respectively. The percentages of drugs prescribed by generic name and from essential veterinary drug list were 90.1 % (2014/2235) and 99.7 % (2229/2235), respectively. The most commonly prescribed antimicrobials and anthelmintics were oxytetracycline 1016 (45.5 %), penicillin and streptomycin combination 168 (7.5 %), sulfa drugs 23 (1.0 %), and albendazole 732 (32.8 %) and ivermectin 137 (6.1 %). Among the 1819 animal-patient encounters, only 57 % (n = 1037) of the prescriptions were written adequately, 43 % (n = 782) incorrectly prescribed and 1179 cases of the adequately specified prescription were tentatively diagnosed. For 656 (53.9 %) and 233 (26.8 %) inadequately specified cases antimicrobials and anthelmintics were prescribed, respectively. Antibiotics were prescribed irrationally for cases which were tentatively diagnosed as parasitic 21.6 % (n = 262) and viral to prevent secondary bacterial complications 6.0 % (n = 73). Among all patients that were admitted to veterinary clinics, 96.6 % (1757) were treated empirically without getting correct laboratory-supported diagnosis. Chi Square test for trend analysis showed a statistically significant association between irrational drug usage and year (p = 0.000). CONCLUSIONS: The findings had shown problems in generic prescribing, incorrect diagnosis, and non-availability of standard veterinary treatment guideline and drug formulary in the study area. Therefore, veterinary drugs, specially, antimicrobial agents should be judiciously used; and a wide scale study to safeguard the public from drug residual effects and antimicrobial resistance development is recommended.