An in-depth study of patent medicine sellers' perspectives on malaria in a rural Nigerian community

The study was conducted in Ugwugo-Nike, a rural community in south-east Nigeria. It involved in-depth interviews with 13 patent medicine sellers.A majority of the medicine sellers were not trained health professionals and malaria is recognized as a major health problem by them. There is poor knowledge and poor dispensing behaviour in relation to childhood malaria episodes. Although referral of severe malaria is common, there are those who will not refer. Verbal advice is rarely given to the care-givers.More action research and interventions to improve prescription and referral practices and giving verbal advice to care-givers is recommended. Ways to integrate the drug sellers in the health system are also recommended.Malaria is a major public health problem in Nigeria, being one of the five leading causes of out-patient visits and mortality, especially in children under five years of age [1]. Prompt access to early diagnosis and effective antimalarial treatment are major strategies for reducing morbidity and mortality from malaria [2,3].However, most of the early treatments for fever in most developing countries occur through self-medication with antimalarial drugs bought from patent medicine sellers (PMS) [4-6]. In Nigeria, PMS are usually the first choice in health care and a recognized primary source of orthodox drugs for both rural ad urban populations, especially the poor [7,8]. In addition to selling drugs, they are also a major source of advice about illness and drug therapy [9].The patent medicine seller can be defined as a person without formal pharmacy training, who sells orthodox pharmaceutical products on a retail basis for profit [10]. Patent medicine stores are owned by the holders of patent and proprietary medicine vendors licenses. Ordinarily the patent medicines should be sold in their original packs. Over-the- counter (OTC) drugs are the only drugs authorized to be sold by the vendors, but they generally sell all types of drugs as determined by the