Abstract

Diabetes is a global health issue as it is a metabolic disease that affects individuals of all ages. The success of long term maintenance therapy for diabetes mellitus depends largely upon the patient’s compliance with a therapeutic plan. This study investigated the level of compliance with treatment regimen among clients with diabetes mellitus in selected hospital in Benin City, Edo state. A descriptive cross sectional design was used, A total of 300 hundred and six (306) diabetic patients were selected using the convenient sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was a self-structured questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistic in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21. Results from the study showed that 59.3% of the respondents had good knowledge of diabetes while 37.7% of the respondents had fair knowledge, and 3.0% of the respondents had poor knowledge. Majority 184 (61.3%) of the respondent had poor compliance to their treatment regimen. Significant relationship between the level of compliance and demographic characteristics of the respondents like sex (p=0.0011), religion (p=0.040) and ethnic group (p=0.007) was found. There was also a significant relationship (p=0.000) between the knowledge of diabetes and rate of compliance of the respondents. More also, a significant difference was found in the level of knowledge of diabetes among the respondents in the two hospitals (p. = 0.000). Similarly, there was a significant relationship in the rate of compliance to diabetic regimens among the respondents in the selected hospitals (p = 0.010) Therefore, it is recommended that government should subsidized drugs and laboratory investigation for diabetics patient as well made the drugs available in the government  owned pharmacy.

Key words: Non-compliance, compliance, diabetic patient, diabetes treatment regimen.