Prevalence and predictors of self-medication among university students in Dodoma City, central Tanzania.

Self-medication carries substantial risk of deleterious consequences to individuals and the healthcare system. Understanding its prevalence and predictors is an important pre-requisite for changing this behavior. This was an analytical cross-sectional study that involved university students in two universities in Dodoma city council. We selected 620 study participants for inclusion through multistage sampling procedure, for a semi-structured questionnaire interview. We used STATA version 14 to perform logistic regression analysis in determining the strength of the association. The prevalence of self-medication in the past 12 months prior to data collection was found to be 85.65% (95% CI: 82.65-88.20) because of high cost of service (60.08%) and having the same condition (63.84%). Participants self-medicated for headache and fever (58.76%), and diarrhea (52.54%). Participants' sex, university, programme level, and marital status were the best predictors for self-medication; p = 0.011, 0.009, 0.014 and 0.030 respectively. This study demonstrated high prevalence of self-medication despite 100% health insurance coverage among the studied population. Having a similar symptom/condition, and cost of service were the most common drivers for self-medication. The findings from this study highlight the need for development of a targeted intervention for curbing this pervasive health care issue in Tanzania universities. Further research investigating student satisfaction with university health care services is recommended.