Table 1. Antibiotic dispensing without a valid prescription in online and community pharmacies, by pharmacy characteristic, China, 2018.
| Characteristic | No. (%) |
Pa | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | Dispensed antibiotics |
|||||||
| No | Yes |
|||||||
| No prescription | Out-of-date prescription | Prescription provided by pharmacy | ||||||
| Online pharmacy | 220 (100.0) | 46 (20.9) | 118 (67.8) | 44 (25.3) | 12 (6.9) | NA | ||
| Notice posted on website that it is illegal to sell prescription-only drugs without a prescription | < 0.0001 | |||||||
| No | 109 (49.6) | 17 (15.6) | 84 (91.3) | 8 (8.7) | 0 (0.0) | |||
| Yes | 111 (50.4) | 29 (26.1) | 34 (41.5) | 36 (43.9) | 12 (14.6) | |||
| Community pharmacy | 675 (100.0) | 89 (13.2) | 568 (96.9) | NA | 18 (3.1) | NA | ||
| Type of city | < 0.0001 | |||||||
| Provincial capital city | 225 (33.3) | 64 (28.4) | 143 (88.8) | NA | 18 (11.2) | |||
| Prefectural-level city | 225 (33.3) | 11 (4.9) | 214 (100.0) | NA | 0 (0.0) | |||
| County | 225 (33.3) | 14 (6.2) | 211 (100.0) | NA | 0 (0.0) | |||
| Geographic location | < 0.0001 | |||||||
| East | 225 (33.3) | 38 (16.9) | 187 (100.0) | NA | 0 (0.0) | |||
| Central | 225 (33.3) | 30 (13.3) | 192 (98.5) | NA | 3 (1.5) | |||
| West | 225 (33.3) | 21 (9.3) | 189 (92.6) | NA | 15 (7.4) | |||
| Separate counter for antibiotics | 0.27 | |||||||
| Yes | 651 (96.4) | 84 (12.9) | 550 (97.0) | NA | 17 (3.0) | |||
| No | 24 (3.6) | 5 (20.8) | 18 (94.7) | NA | 1 (5.3) | |||
| No. of pharmacy staff at work | 0.21 | |||||||
| 1 | 148 (21.9) | 16 (10.8) | 130 (98.5) | NA | 2 (1.5) | |||
| 2–3 | 390 (57.8) | 49 (12.6) | 331 (97.1) | NA | 10 (2.9) | |||
| ≥ 4 | 137 (20.3) | 24 (17.5) | 107 (94.7) | NA | 6 (5.3) | |||
NA: not applicable.
a Fisher exact test.