Title : Analyzing the Impact of COVID-19 on Medication Adherence in Pakistan: Exploring Demographic Factors
Abstract:
The reputable Economist magazine, posed a question in its Sep. 2020 issue that “Is Pakistan really handling the pandemic better than India?” In this paper we will endeavour to statistically answer this question, and submit possible explanations supporting our results. Furthermore, in the published literature, there is a scarcity of gender-wise studies on the prevalence and incidence of COVID-19 in Pakistan, we also address this aspect. In this paper we consider the impact of COVID-19 on medication adherence in the city of Rawalpindi (population 2.4 millions), Pakistan w.r.t to several parameters, such as gender, age, education, number of children and time since taking medication. Medication adherence has always been challenging and complex health behaviour, but COVID-19 pandemic brought its own disruptions. A cross-sectional in-person outpatient survey was conducted at three public hospitals in Rawalpindi between 03 October 2022 and 24 November 2022. A survey questionnaire was developed in Urdu (National language) using the Medication Adherence Context and Outcomes framework, the questionnaire also included several demographic parameters. Descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA analysis were performed for 207 respondents, mean age 41.45 years (SD 14.93) out of which 115 were Male and 92 were Female. The p-value with respect to age, months taking medicine, number of children and years of education were found to be 0.14, 0.83, 0.722, 0.49 respectively and all higher than the significance level of p-value = 0.05 considered. Thus, COVID-19 had no significant statistical effect on the demographics discussed. There could be multitude of reasons having possible explanations to support the results, such as smart lock-downs, food-money scheme launched by the Government, food and household items donated by the general public and more. Apparently all these actions resulted in better handling of COVID-19 in Pakistan. Thus we conclude that the answer to the Economist’s questions is yes.
