Assessment of awareness and attitude towards counterfeit medicines among pharmacy professionals working in community drug retail outlets in Harar town, Ethiopia

Background: Counterfeit medicines are drugs which are deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source. According to the WHO 2017 report, about 1% of prescribed medicines in the developed world and about 10-50% in parts of the developing world are estimated to be counterfeits. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the knowledge and attitude of pharmacy profes-sionals towards counterfeit medicines in Harar town. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted among pharmacy professionals found in Harar town, East Ethiopia. All pharmacy professionals working in community drug retail outlets of Harar town was included in the study. Accordingly, 92 pharmacy professionals were included in the study. The data was collected by using self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was prepared in English language. Data was coded, entered and analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sci-ence version 22. Then chi-square(x2) test was performed to determine there exists association of so-cio-demographic characters, profession and year of service towards awareness and attitude about counterfeit medicines was investigated using. Result: A total of 92 respondents were included in the study. The majority, 76 (82.6%), of the study participants had information about counterfeit medicine. The 26(28.3%), 42(45.7%) and 24(26%) of the respondents replied that counterfeit medicines have problem of efficacy, safety and cause eco-nomic problem on sellers of genuine drugs respectively. Majority of the study of the study partici-pants were not aware of a way of identification of counterfeit medicines, with only 18(19.6%), 47(51.1%) and 27(29.3%), replied that counterfeit medicines can be identified by its effect, inspec-tion and cost respectively. Majority of the respondents, 60(65.2%), responded that pharmacy profes-sional that knowingly dispense counterfeit medicine are business man /women. Most of the re-spondents, 66(71.7%), replied that pharmacy professionals carry out the business of counterfeit medicines transaction because of big profit obtained from such an activity. gender, profession and year of service in serving as pharmacy professional was found to be significantly associated with awareness towards counterfeit medicines, (p<0.05). Conclusion: Significant proportion of the study participants were not aware of the problems associ-ated with counterfeit medicines as efficacy, safety and economic problems. Majority of the respond-ents still are unaware about ways of identification of counterfeit medicines as inspection, by effica-cy and cost. Keywords: Counterfeit medicines; Awareness; Attitude; Professionals; Drug retail outlets