Use of a pilot drug information centre.

INTRODUCTION Provision of access to drug information by prescribers and other health care professionals is important in pharmacotherapy. At the time of this study there was very scanty literature in this area from Africa. OBJECTIVE To assess use of a pilot drug information centre (DIC) which was set up in a department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics in a university teaching hospital in Uganda. METHODS This was a situational analysis with a prospective study design. The pilot DIC was established and its use over an eleven-month period was assessed. The received queries were evaluated for source of the query, reason for the query and type of query. RESULTS During the 11 months 297 queries were received, 72.3% of which were from public hospitals. Most were from prescribing doctors (54.2%). Majority were on drug-drug interaction (41.2%), followed by therapy (23.2%). Out of 197 specific drug requests, 65.5% were on antiretroviral. CONCLUSION We found that healthcare professionals were enthusiastically using the drug information centre. It is, therefore, necessary and feasible to establish a DIC in Uganda that will enable these professionals to readily access drug information.