Wasted drugs cost south Essex £5m

9:47pm Tuesday 22nd April 2008

Comments (3)   Have your say »

PATIENTS in south Essex are throwing £5million a year down the drain by wasting medicine, health chiefs have revealed.

Primary care trusts have now joined forces in a new campaign to highlight the scale of medicine wastage throughout south Essex to ease the financial burden on the NHS.

The problem mainly centres on repeat prescriptions that are ordered and collected by patients, but are not needed because they have stopped using the drugs. Once medicines have been dispensed they cannot be recycled and have to be thrown away, whether they've been used or not.

Thousands of posters and leaflets are being distributed to GP surgeries and pharmacies as part of the campaign by South East Essex and South West Essex primary care trusts. Flyers have also been produced to go into prescription bags in pharmacies.

The campaign also encourages patients to have regular reviews of their medicines with their pharmacist or doctor.

Another focus is to raise awareness of the dangers of having unused medicines lying around at home, particularly if young children are around.

Simon Williams, associate director of pharmacy and medicines management at South East Essex Primary Care Trust, said: "Unwanted drugs in the home may mean patients are not getting the benefit they should be from their medicines. It also represents a large amount of waste.

"The medicine can't be used again and if we could save some of that money we could reinvest it in other areas of health care to benefit the local community."

Bill Sandhu, head of medicines management at South West Essex Primary Care Trust said: "If anyone has any unused medicines we're encouraging them to take them back to the pharmacy for safe disposal and have a chat with the pharmacist or GP about their medication and how to use it more effectively.

The wasted medicine bill of the whole county is £11million while in the south of the county the £5million wasted could pay for 1,000 more hip replacements; 700 more heart by-pass operations;7,000 more cataract operations; 150 more community nurses; and 900 more knee replacements."