Everyone has needed some sort of medicine during sometime in their lives, but many underestimate how much money is lost through medicine waste. When medicine is handed back to pharmacies or simply disregarded, many, if not all patients are unknowingly throwing away thousands of pounds in the process.
This problem cannot be solved by patient awareness alone, as once medicine is thrown away, nothing can be done except destroy it due to health and safety procedure. But now is a better time than ever for patients to fully understand that medicine=money. While the NHS faces service cuts and further scrutiny from the government, medicine waste is being overlooked despite costing the health industry millions annually.
Although some procedures have been put in place to rectify this, such as 28 day cut offs for prescriptions, not enough has been done to reduce the waste according to Lin-Nam Wang.
Wang, Pharmacist and contribution editor at The Pharmaceutical Journal stated on bb.co.uk: “Human nature is such that when no value is attributed to something people take it for granted - when something is free, people behave more irresponsibly…We're so lucky to have a system that allows free medicines - and long may it continue - but I'm told by colleagues in countries where people have to pay for medicines that they don't see this sort of waste.”
The value of medicine needs to be discussed further in order to save the health sector from further cuts and reductions of health job openings.