MORE THAN 200 pharmacies have signed up to a new campaign being run by the Health Service Executive (HSE) South to encourage people to return unwanted or out-of-date medicines so they can be disposed of safely and properly.
The Dispose of Unused Medicines Properly (Dump) campaign, which has been organised by the HSE with the community pharmacists in Cork and Kerry, will start next Monday and run in participating pharmacies until March 8th.
The initiative, which is supported by Cork City Council, Cork Co Council, Kerry Co Council and the Regional Waste Management Office, applies to both prescription medicines and those bought over the counter.
HSE South community care pharmacist Louise Creed said that medicines can accumulate in the home for a variety of reasons such as people failing to finish a course of antibiotics or other medication when a particular illness or condition appears to have improved.
“We would urge people to take this opportunity to get rid of out-of-date or unused medicines. Medication can pose a real hazard in the home, particularly to children or other vulnerable people,” said Ms Creed, adding that checking on medicines should be done regularly
“Check all the dates and remove anything that is out of date or no longer required. As well as the hazards posed by overdose, accidental poisoning and damage to the environment, medicines can change when out of date and may end up being harmful.”
Ms Creed pointed out that the National Poisons Information Centre in 2007 received over 11,000 inquiries with the majority relating to pharmaceutical overdoses and some 52.9 per cent of these relating to children under 10 years which are assumed to be accidental.
Brightly coloured medications can easily be mistaken for sweets or drinks by children or other vulnerable people, said Ms Creed, adding that there were an average of eight accidental deaths due to medication poisoning in Cork and Kerry each year.
Another concern arising from the non-proper disposal of medicines is that they may be used by somebody to attempt suicide and every year more than 1,000 people present at emergency departments at Cork and Kerry hospitals due to intentional overdose of medication.
These 1,000 presentations account for 75 per cent of all parasuicide or deliberate self-harm presentations and while several medications can be taken in overdose acts, very often it can be a single medication, according to Ms Creed.
Some 44 per cent of these presentations involved a minor tranquilliser, 33 per cent involved medicines containing paracetamol, and 25 per cent involved antidepressants/mood stabilisers with, on average, 14 of the 90 or so suicides each year in Cork and Kerry being due to an overdose of medication.
Ms Creed also warned about the dangers of the inappropriate sharing of medicines which can cause illness, injury or even death and the dangers of not completing a prescribed course of medication, particularly antibiotics.
“When antibiotics are not used fully or are shared, not all bacteria are destroyed and more resistant bacteria survive and multiply. These drug-resistant bacteria then make it harder to prevent and treat infections because fewer antibiotics are effective against them,” she explained.