Drug Adherence among Diabetic and Hypertensive Patients in Association with Demographic and Healthy Behavior

Jamal Kareem Shakor, MPH, Saleem Saaed Qader, MBChB, MD, MSc, MPH, PhD

Abstract: Drug adherence has been taken an imperative role in chronic disease therapy, because, adherence is required in lifelong drug therapy, which is indicated for the most chronic conditions. The aim of this study was to investigate adherence rate among chronic patients in relations to the demographic data, medical and health conditions in Kurdistan. The data have been collected depending on the designed questionnaire of the project and the eight items Morisky green scale (MMAS-8) for measuring adherence level. In this study, the high adherence level was 96 (29.8 %), and moderate and lower adherence level were, 163 (50.6 %) and 63 (19.6 %) respectively. The main causes of low adherence regarding to intentional behavior were patients feeling hassle and difficulty with treatment plan.

Keywords: diabetes mellitus, hypertension, drug adherence, demographic data, healthy behavior