Stocking up your medicine cabinet for the summer holidays? Make sure you clear it first!

NHS Norfolk is urging anyone stocking up on medicines for a summer trip to clear their medicine cabinet of out-of-date prescription drugs first.

Out-of-date or excess medicines you have been prescribed and not used should be returned to your local community pharmacy – or your GP dispensary.

Ian Small, deputy head of prescribing and medicines management at NHS Norfolk, said: “Whether you’re spending your summer holiday in this country or abroad, now is the time when many people tend to stock up their medicine cabinet.


“Your community pharmacist can advise you about medications for various conditions, from those designed to help with travel sickness and stomach upsets, to hay fever remedies and medication to help soothe insect bites and stings.


“But please clear out your medicine cabinet first. Out-of-date prescription drugs should not be taken as their effectiveness will have diminished over time, and they will no longer provide effective treatment for the condition for which they were intended. Taking drugs long after they were originally prescribed can also be dangerous.


“As well as asking patients to return old, out-of-date and unwanted medicines, we are also asking them to ensure they only order what they need.”

Wasted medication continues to cost NHS Norfolk £5 million a year. It is thought to mainly be the result of people using repeat prescriptions to re-order medication they don’t need and never use.

Once medicines have been dispensed they cannot be recycled and have to be thrown away – used or not.

The £5m worth of wasted medication could pay for other vital health services, including:

– 1,000 more hip replacements or;

– 700 more heart by-pass operations or;

– 7,000 more cataract operations or;

– 150 more community nurses or;

– 900 more knee replacements.

The £5m worth of wasted medicine comes from a total medicines budget for NHS Norfolk of about £118m per year. Therefore, Norfolk patients throw away about £1 in every £23 that is spent on prescribed medicines.

The £5m figure only represents medicines handed back to pharmacists and GP practices, not those taken back to hospital units for disposal or thrown away at home. It also does not include the cost to the NHS of having to dispose of these medicines properly.

Medicines which tend to be wasted more often are preventative medicines, such as those for high blood pressure, osteoporosis and asthma inhalers. Painkillers and drugs for depression are also often thrown away.

Ian added: “We certainly do not want patients to stop taking medicines that their doctors have prescribed, but we would like them to check what they have in their cupboards before ordering all the items on their repeat prescriptions.”


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