Background Self-medication is the use of drugs to treat self-diagnosed disorders or symptoms or the intermittent or continued use of prescribed drug for chronic or recurrent disease or symptoms, and it is mostly common in developing countries. This study therefore assessed the practice of self-medication among undergraduate students of a private university in Nigeria. Methods The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional design. A pretested questionnaire was self-administered to 384 undergraduate students of the university. Data were analysed and summarised using descriptive and inferential statistics such as chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests. Results Overall, 297 (81.8%) undergraduate students practiced self-medication. About 71% of the students had used analgesic, antibiotics (10.5%), and antimalarial drugs (33%) without prescription within one month prior to the survey. The most commonly used drug for self-medication was paracetamol (75.1%). Furthermore, self-medication was found to be significantly associated with age (p=0.021), gender (p < 0.001), college (p=0.025), and year of study (p=0.004). Some of the reasons why undergraduate students practiced self-medication were because of the unfriendly attitude of health care workers (27.7%), lack of time to go to school clinic (26.7%), school clinic is too far from hostel (15.3%), and drugs prescribed in the school clinic do not improve health condition (15.3%). Conclusion Majority of the students attributed the practice of self-medication to unfriendly attitude of health care workers in the university clinic.

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Most of the power generation globally is by coal-fired power plants resulting in large stockpiles of fly ash. The trace elements associated with the ash particles are subjected to the leaching effects of precipitation which may lead to the subsequent contamination of surface and groundwater systems. In this study, we successfully demonstrate an efficient and sustainable dual treatment remediation strategy for the removal of high levels of Cr and SO introduced by fly ash leachate generated by a power station situation in Mpumalanga, South Africa. The treatment consisted of a primary fixed-bed bioreactor kept at a reduction potential for Cr reduction. Metagenome sequencing clearly indicated a diverse bacterial community containing various bacteria, predominantly of the phylum Proteobacteria which includes numerous species known for their ability to detoxify metals such as Cr. This was followed by a secondary BaCO/dispersed alkaline substrate column for SO removal. The combination of these two systems resulted in the removal of 99% Cr and 90% SO. This is the first effective demonstration of an integrated system combining a biological and chemical strategy for the remediation of multi-contaminants present in fly ash leachate in South Africa.

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