Given that it may be years before antiretroviral drugs, which are powerful toxic medicines, can be safely dispensed and monitored in Africa, vitamins may be a helpful, safe stopgap measure.
The medication use process includes prescribing, dispensing, administering, and monitoring the medication.
The medication use process in the United Kingdom (UK) comprises of four basic steps- prescribing, dispensing, administration and monitoring.
ADE was defined as any incident resulting in injury from any stage of the medication use process (ordering, transcribing, dispensing, administrating and monitoring) [ 34].
Medicines are the most commonly used clinical intervention in healthcare, and errors involving the prescribing, dispensing, administration and monitoring steps of medication use are common [ 2– 4].
Another key strength is that by interviewing patients, GPs and pharmacists the research explores medication adherence from the different perspectives of those involved in all aspects of medication from prescribing and monitoring, dispensing and advising, to self-management in adherence.
ADEs may be due to: 1) medication errors; 2) adverse drug reactions (ADRs), i.e. unintended reactions occurring at usual doses [ 4]; 3) interactions with other drugs, underlying diseases or the patient (idiosyncratic reactions and allergies) or 4) errors in prescribing, dispensing, adhering to and monitoring medications [ 1, 5].
Nurse-driven ART in Lesotho (28), the use of community-based Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) to dispense ART and monitor stable patients in one region of Malawi (29), and community care coordinators in Kenya (13) are examples of such 'task-shifting'.
A further breakdown of medication errors into the five stages of the medication use process, which are prescribing, transcribing/documenting, dispensing, administering, and monitoring, allows the identification of error-prone steps.
