Public awareness of potential paracetamol poisoning

Evaluation of incidence and patient awareness of potential paracetamol poisoning was reviewed. Paracetamol is an over the counter analgesic and antipyretic which can be easily purchased by everybody. Paracetamol containing products such as suppositories, syrup, tablet and etc. are available with reasonable prices. Due to the easily available factor, everybody who uses this drug is vulnerable to the side effects of its misusage. The major side effect is over dosage of paracetamol. However it varies depending on each individual. In overdose it causes significant morbidity and mortality. The burden to health care services is considerable, with a high financial cost and many hospital admissions. Once the individual is admitted to the ward due to the ward due to excessive ingestion of paracetamol, the blood sample will be taken after 4 hours of ingestion and sent to TOM unit to determine whether the blood sample is toxic or non toxic by running an essay. The result will be interpreted by referring to the Rumack-Mathew Nomogram.
The main objective of our study is to enhance public awareness of potential paracetamol poisoning. Data have showed that, the toxic case of paracetamol poisoning in Kedah state from year 2007 to 2008 increase approximately 64%. Most paracetamol poisoning cases are due to the willful ingestion of supratherapeutic doses with the intention of committing suicide. Because of that reason, we have decided to study public understanding and conduct public education on the effect of overdose to make the public to be more aware of paracetamol containing products.
A structural questionnaire that has been distributed randomly among 100 publics that come to Hospital Sultanah Bahiyah.
From the overall study, we expect to enhance patients' awareness of potential paracetamol poisoning thus decrease the cases in the future. We also find that many of our sample does not know the adverse effects and the maximum dose of paracetamol poisoning. Most of our sample have take paracetamol without aware about the adverse effect if overdose and it might cause paracetamol poisoning.