Generic prescribing in Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria

A study was carried out to assess the generic prescribing pattern among medical doctors in Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Teaching Hospital, Zaria, Nigeria. The results indicate that 98 (49%) of the 200 drugs studied were prescribed using generic names while 64 (32%) were prescribed using both generic and proprietary names. One hundred and ninety‐two (96%) of the 200 drugs studied are on the Essential Drugs List (EDL), Second Revision 1991 of the Federal Ministry of Health, Lagos, Nigeria. The results further showed that out of the 77,889 prescriptions scrutinized, 48,451 (62.2%) were written using generic names only while 29,438 (37.8%) were prescribed using proprietary names. Based on the above findings, more prescriptions were written using generic names than proprietary names during the period of this study, showing that the government's effort towards educating doctors to prescribe generically is achieving the desired results.