Abstract:
Background: World health organization defines traditional medicines as the sum of all knowledge and practices used in diagnosis, prevention and elimination of illnesses. The proportion of traditional eye medicine use in Africa was 13.2- 82.3%. Despite, high frequency of traditional eye medicine use in Africa, population based studies are limited in Ethiopia specifically in Gondar city.
Objective: The aim of this study was to assess attitude, practice and associated factors among adult residents towards traditional eye medicine in Gondar city, northwest Ethiopia.
Methods: Community based cross sectional study was conducted from April 25 to May 15, 2017. Data from the entire questionnaire was coded, entered in to Epi info 3.5.1 and analyzed using SPSS 20 software. Frequency and cross tabulations were used for descriptive analysis. Associations between variables were analyzed using binary logistic regression through enter method with 95 % confidence interval.
Results: A total of 600 subjects participated in the study with 95 % response rate. From total study subject, 292 (48.7 %) (95% CI: 44.7-52.7%)) of them had good attitude towards traditional eye medicine use and 73 (12.2 %) (95%CI: 10-15%)) were used traditional eye medicine in the past two years. Variables such as positive family history of traditional eye medicine use (AOR=3.30(95% CI: 2.01-5.47) and absence of health insurance (AOR=1.60(95% CI: 1.14-2.55) were significantly associated with good attitude towards traditional eye medicine use. Being illiterate (AOR=5.40(95% CI: 5.3-12.3) and positive family history of TEM use (AOR=4(95% CI: 1.84-8.67) were significantly associated with traditional eye medicine use.
Conclusion and recommendation: In this study, almost half of the study subjects had good attitude towards traditional eye medicine use and the proportion of traditional eye medicine use was low in the past two years. Positive family history of traditional eye medicine use and availability of traditional healers had significant association with attitude and use of traditional eye medicine. Community awareness about traditional eye medicine use is important.
