Unused Medicines / Reuse of Medicines.

Medicine disposal practices is common in every country where the unused and expired medicines will dispose in land-fill site or isolated place or by burning.

Reuse and recycle has become a concept of everyday life. World is talking about recycling of paper, glass, plastic but vast quantities of unused dispensed medicines are disposed in trash. At the same time, people who desperately need of these medicines have no access due to rising cost. One of the major reason for this is the lack of awareness about the reuse of unused medicines. In the current economic situation, people should be educated and Govt policies/programmes should be initiated to donate the unused medicines.

1. Every year an estimated $420 million worth of unused drugs are thrown away in UK and the figure is $5 billion in US. Source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEHV0y3vzj8. 2. On Oct 1st 2019 timesofindia published an article which states Five tonnes of expired and unused drugs collected from 200 collection boxes in Thiruvananthapuram kept at the medical stores of the district will be transported for scientific disposal to Mangalore.

There is no system in place, which would direct the patients and pharmacy centre to send the medicines unused by them through a specific safe collection and disposal mechanism. Currently we have some organisation and apps where they collect or direct the needy to get unused medicines.

1. https://www.udayfoundation.org/donate-medicines-delhi/

2. https://medicinebaba.org/

3. https://www.aid2needy.com/about.html

But I have some ideas where we can reduce the unused medicines before it goes for a disposal.

Plan A.

Create an app and list the medical shops, who are willing to give away the near by expiry date (minimum 6 and maximum 3 months before expiry date) drugs at discount rate. The needy can buy the required drugs at a discount price, as per his convenient place.

Plan B.

Create a pharmacy centre with the required government approvals and checks, where the donor can give away the unused medicines and the same can be purchased by the needy with certain T&C's.

The above 2 plans need some sort of analysis in terms of identifying the drugs, which can't be affordable by cluster of needy's in different categories and the list of suitable ways to implement the plan and their constraints or barriers. We will publishing those information in the next article.

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