Journal of Pharmacy Practice and Community Medicine Vol. 4 ● Issue 2 ● Apr-Jun 2018 ● www.jppcm.org S47 Journal of Pharmacy Practice and Community Medicine.2018, 4(2):47-50• http://dx.doi.org/10.5530/jppcm.2018.2.13 e-ISSN: 2455-3255 OPEN ACCESS RESEARCH ARTICLE Received: 12 February 2018; Accepted: 27 April 2018 *Correspondence to: Dr. Ahmed Al-mohamadi, Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacy Practice, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Science and Technology, Sana’a, REPUBLIC OF YEMEN. Email: a.mansor@ust.edu Copyright: © the author(s),publisher and licensee Indian Academy of Pharmacists. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License INTRODUCTION Generic medicine is not inferior than innovative or branded medicine and thus it can be substitutable with an innovative/branded medicine. [1] The main purpose of introducing the idea of generic medicine was to reduce escalating health care costs and to improve the access of public to essential medicine. [2-3] The high price of branded medicines was reported as the main barrier toward access to the medicines, mainly in developing countries. [4] Yemen is among the lowest country on annual health expenditure. [5] In such a scenario like Yemen, it is highly desirable to encourage the use of generic medicines throughout the nation. Physicians and pharmacists can play infuential role in this regard through prescribing and dispensing generic medicines respectively, provided they should work collectively. [6] But, there is controversial perception regarding bioequivalence, safety, and quality of generic medicines [7] which affect prescribing attitude of physicians [8] and dispensing behaviour of practising pharmacists. [9] This problem can be downgraded by providing educational interventions about the benefts of generic prescribing to the prescribers, dispensers, medical students, and pharmacy students. There are limited studies in the low- and middle-income countries on the assessment and comparison of the knowledge and perception of fnal year medical and pharmacy students regarding generic medicine and brand substitution. In near future, fnal year medical and pharmacy students would become the registered professionals. Thus, their knowledge and perception at this level would refect their future practice, in term of prescribing and dispensing, of generic medicines. [8-9] In Southeast Yemen, knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of pharmacy and medical students were assessed, and the fnding revealed that those students had knowledge defcit regarding generic medicines’ bioequivalence, safety, and quality. [10] The fndings of this study can be considered as a point of reference for legislation, policy makers, pharmacy and medical schools and future healthcare professionals in Yemen. The objective of the study is to evaluate Yemeni medical and pharmacy students’ knowledge and attitude regarding generic medicines. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from medical and pharmacy students at six public and private universities in Yemen in 2013. This study was approved from the ethical research committee in the University of Science and Technology, Sana’a, Yemen. Anonymity and confdentiality for all participants were ensured. Participation Consent was implied by the completion and return of the survey. Data were collected using pre-tested questionnaire. [4] The Questionnaire used in the survey was divided into two sections. The frst section comprised demographic variables including student’s nationality, age, gender, and type of scholarship and university. The second section was further divided into Ahmed Al-mohamadi 1*, Abdulsalam M. Halboup 1 , Mohamed Izham Mohamed Ibrahim 2 , Mahfoudh Abdulghani 4 , Yaser Mohammed Al-Woraf 1,3 , Gamil Otham 1 , Mohammed Alshakka 5 , Mukhtar Ansari 6 1 Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacy Practice, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Science and Technology, Sana’a, REPUBLIC OF YEMEN. 2 Professor, College of Pharmacy, Qatar University, Doha, QATAR. 3 Clinical Pharmacy Department, Ajman University, Ajman, UAE. 4 Department of Pharmacologyand Toxicology, Unaizah College of Pharmacy, Qassim University, Unaizah, 51911, Al Qassim, SAUDI ARABIA. 5 Section of Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Aden University, REPUBLIC OF YEMEN. 6 Department of Clinical Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, University of Hail, Hail, SAUDI ARABIA. Abstract Objective: The study is to evaluate Yemeni medical and pharmacy students’ knowledge and attitude regarding generic medicines. Method: A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from final-year medical and pharmacy students at six public and private universities in Yemen. The questionnaire was distributed among the students through their course coordinators. Students were clearly informed about the objective of the study and their written consents were taken before the survey. The responses were entered in SPSS, and descriptive and inferential analyses were carried out. Results: The response rate was 60.1%. Overall the half of participants’ perception regarding generic medicine was positive. Perceptions of pharmacy students’ regarding generic medicines were better than those of the medical students. Conclusion: The present study concluded that both studied groups had insufficient knowledge about quality, safety and bioequivalence of generic medicines. The medical students showed poorer knowledge than pharmacy students which need to give more attention from educators regarding the use of generic medicines. Key words: Generic drugs, Medical students, Perception, Pharmacy students, Yemen. Medical and Pharmacy Students’ Perceptions Regarding Generic Medicines in Yemen