Awareness of Counterfeit Medicine among Saudi University Students

Background: Lack of knowledge and awareness of the society is one of the major contributing factors to the prevalence of counterfeit medicines in a country. There is limited information in the developing countries on university student’s facts concerning counterfeit medicines.

Aim: To assess how the university student either in medial or non-medical colleges identify counterfeit and substandard medicines and to evaluate their vulnerability level toward counterfeit drugs.

Methods: Structure electronic questionnaire was distributed in Saudi Arabia, between December 2020 till March 2022. The sample included 1216 respondents selected conveniently from two distinct groups (Student in either medical or non-medical colleges). 1204 participants who were fluent in either English or Arabic were included. The objective of this study is to give better understanding of counterfeiting in drugs and how to fight it.

Results: From one thousand two hundred and sixteen questionnaires were distributed to university student both medical college and non-medical college, only 12 were refused to participate, which indicate higher in response rate. 85% of the answers were female, 36% below 20 and 92% of them were Saudi citizen wit 67% single state. Most of the results of the survey (38 items) were insignificant (p-value>0.05) only 13 (34%) question of the survey relived significant. So, more awareness towards counterfeit medicines, in the level of university student will needed reduce the lack of knowledge.

Conclusion: Although medical school students have higher knowledge about counterfeit drugs, nevertheless, the overall findings suggested low-level of knowledge, exposure to counterfeit were estimate in both medical and non-medical college students in most of the surveyed items.