Improvement in Medication Adherence Using TV Programmes as Reminders

Literature Review

Treatment of chronic diseases require long-term therapies. Medication non-adherence is a hurdle for obtaining the desired results in such treatment processes (Alhazami et al., 2020). Non-adherence is a complex set of behaviours which may be due to intentional or unintentional causes (Chan et al., 2020). Patient’s inability to adhere due to lack of resources is called unintentional non-adherence. When patient decides not to follow the regime, it is called intentional non-adherence. Patients may resort to non-adherent behaviour at any stage of the medication process (Hatah et al., 2020).

Studies report that medication non-adherence is a worldwide phenomenon (Hatah et al., 2020). In developed countries non-adherence is reported to be 50% (Institute, 2009). It is estimated that in United States the rate of non-adherence for chronic patients range between 30% to 50% while for developing countries like Gambia and China the rates are 73% and 54% respectively (Sabaté et al., 2001). Studies conducted in Malaysia reported adherence rate to be 53% (Sufiza Ahmad et al., 2013) and 53.4% (Ramli et al., 2012) among patients suffering from diabetes and hypertension. Studies conducted in Europe reported non-adherence to be 60.24% for antiosteoporotics, 55.63% for antihyperlipidemics and 46.80% for oral antidiabetics (Menditto et al., 2018).