Overmedication in Children

Overmedication in Children

Introduction

A drug is one or more drugs, integrated in a pharmaceutical form, submitted for sale and industrial use or clinical and intended for use in humans or animals, endowed with properties that allow the best effect drug of its components with the prevent, alleviate or ameliorate disease or for modifying physiological states. A drug is a substance exogenous, organic or inorganic, natural or synthetic, capable of inducing functional changes in a living organism, positively or negatively, through a physical, chemical or physical chemistry. This definition, not functional, it is necessary to give the notion of exact and scientific medicine. A distinction is therefore by definition of medicine, namely substance intended to treat an organism, functional definition, however, which has obvious conceptual problems. However, apart from its positive impact of its use to cure a disease, it can also have negative impacts on human beings, if the person is given overmedication or is given wrong medication (Glassner, 2010). Therefore, it is important for the physicians to consider this aspect, before prescribing a medicine to a patient and the quantity to be taken. This paper would therefore, focus on the study of the impact of overmedication on children.

Discussion

The misuse of Drugs endangers children

Many parents threaten their children's lives by administering drugs available without prescription to treat fever or colds, according to a study presented at the annual conference of the International Pharmaceutical Federation. This misuse often results in the lowest income in the hospital. Today, only 30% of drugs sold in US can be used safely in children, according to the Working Group for Drug Development for Children in the United States of America. This is "due to the insufficient efforts made in biomedical research" (Glassner, 2010).

How therapeutic result of this gap, many parents use drugs at hand to treat some health problems of their children, driven also by the false perception that they are safe products. "We were surprised and disturbed to realize that some people thought that the drugs have to be to force insurance if you can buy without a prescription", remarked one of the authors, Rebekah Moles, University of Sydney (Australia). "For example, a parent told us that if Panadol [a commercial form of paracetamol] is available without prescription, administer a double dose could not be harmful and we wonder: What would be the worst that could happen?" (Glassner, 2010).

To carry out this study, Moles and colleagues analyzed five months to 97 adults from various day centers in Sydney: 53 mothers, seven fathers and 37 of these childcare workers to children attending four to five years. The authors put the participants in different situations in which children appeared to have health problems and asked what they would do in each case. Should say whether or not to drugs, which give, when, at what dose and how calculated. The results were conclusive: Considering all experiments, "44% of participants would have given an incorrect dose and only 64% were able to get the dose that was intended ...