Challenges faced by visually disabled people in use of medicines, self-adopted coping strategies and medicine-related mishaps
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World Health Organization. Regional Office for South-East Asia
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Background: Difficulties faced by visually disabled people when using medicines, self-adopted copingstrategies, and medicine-related mishaps have been under-explored locally and internationally. Theobjective of this study was to gain insight regarding this long-neglected issue.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study, using an interviewer administered questionnaire on63 visually disabled adults was carried out at a vocational training centre and a school for visuallydisabled students in Sri Lanka.Results: Among 63 participants, 71% wanted to be independent in medicine use and 79% in spiteof difficulties had self-administered medicines. They had difficulty in locating medicines (25.39%),identifying medicines and medicine containers (17.46%), and administering liquid medications(25.39%). These difficulties led to inaccurate dosing (14.28%), missed doses (39.68%), anddiscontinuation of treatment prematurely (28.57%). Self-adopted coping strategies to overcomethese difficulties included using different sized and shaped containers, tying medicines to theattire, and dipping their finger into a measuring cup while measuring liquid medicines. Mishapsrelated to medicines such as taking vinegar instead of gripe mixture and, putting ear drops intoeyes were disclosed.Conclusions: There were many challenges for visually disabled people in taking medicines andsome self-adopted coping strategies were inadequate to overcome these
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