Audience Awareness and Responses of Accompanying Warnings on Malaria Medication Adverts

Abstract

Malaria disease is considered a global epidemic owing to the worrisome statistics in its mortality rate. In Nigeria, one of the efforts designed to combat this was enlisting malaria medication as an over-the-counter medication to make it accessible to all and sundry. To check the abuse of the medication, adverts for malaria medication often carry a caveat that require that the user consults a doctor should the symptoms persist after three days. This study evaluated the extent to which the audience are aware of and adhere to this caveat. Employing the potentialities of the survey design, it collected data from 500 residents of North Central Nigeria who constituted the population of the study. Premised on the Theory of Reasoned Action, the study found out among others that the first response to malaria symptoms amongst 82% of the respondents, is self-medication. Also, despite the respondents' high exposure to the caveat (91%), there is an abysmally low adherence as only 16% of the respondents attested to a regular compliance. The study thus concluded that while direct to consumer advert for malaria medication may be important for the audience as well as pharmaceutical companies, it inadvertently serves the dysfunctional purpose of promoting unsafe self-medication. The study recommended that advertisers should modify the caveat to emphasize on the severity of non-adherence; possibly similar to that used by tobacco companies which states that‘ smokers are liable to die young'.