AIBU to throw away unopened prescription medicine?

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I am helping clear an elderly person's flat. There is a lot of unopened precription medicine. It is in date but the person has died. I offered to take it to the pharmacy to dispose of it, but my friend (who is Greek) says that in her country they send medicines to Africa and we should try to find a charity to give it to. I know it's valuable to someone, but have no idea where to start. Does anyone take medicine? There's bags full of it.

I had literally 100s of pounds worth of prescription drugs to get rid of when DH died. Most still in sealed boxes. I took it all to the pharmacy but they will have just destroyed it. There must be a better way, another appalling inefficiency in the NHS to my mind.

I understand that the current system requires it and I understand why that is, but there must be another way.

Not necessarily. I’m on loads of medications (cancer). Every time Im admitted to hospital, they insist on giving me them on the drug round rather than letting me take my own. So mine then get unused. Some hospital admissions are scheduled but many aren’t. My meds are also changed very regularly so I end up with old dose amounts, versions of things that are similar but do a slightly different thing etc. I try not to stockpile but it’s impossible not to.

But it is safety?

This is my field but on an international basis.

Drugs have to be maintained and stored within defined temperature and humidity limits otherwise they can lose their integrity.

It would not be safe to accept medicine where storage conditions cannot be verified then re-dispense to another patient.

If a cancer patient or diabetic takes medicine that has lost its clinical efficacy then it can be catastrophic.

The waste is people over ordering repeat medicines that they don't actually need.

And to the comments saying the pharmacy just "issue it anyway", this is a problem with the GP.

Pharmacies won't give you anything that isn't on the prescription. They would be out of pocket massively.

We had this when my dad died. Not in UK so regs may differ, but the underlying issue is chain of custody. Pharmacy can't be certain of the proper storage/temperature/whatever so there's a huge liability issue, which is also why donations won't be accepted. We were told just to bin everything, though one of dad's doctors made a somewhat dodgy exception and took back an almost full package of an extremely expensive cancer medicine (think 3k/month) I assume to hand to new patients as a free sample.

No its not. DH was on 11 different medications, most to try and keep his pain under control. There was no way I was risking running out, but because the doses were so high, every time I tried to order a repeat it raised a query with the surgery pharmacist which had to be referred back to the GP.

This process took up to 10 days. Then a month's prescription was issued and again because of the quantities the pharmacy had to order it which took a couple of days. So yes, I ordered it about 3 weeks in advance to be sure and there was a lot to dispose.of when he died just after I'd collected a batch, but we weren't stockpiling.

Again, an inefficient system making life harder than it needs to be for patients and costing money.

@Dotjones I assume you are joking?!!

this is one of the stupidest, most ridiculous comments i have ever seen on mumsnet

Obviously do not bin it - and definitely do not take out of the packaging (which would poison animals and the landscape)

Tbh it depends on what it is. Meds for specific stuff like diabetes or whatever take to the chemist. Stuff like painkillers just keep a hold of, they come in handy.

Some pharmacies order it for you - you tell them what you want, and they "should" just tick the boxes for those items, but often they tick all boxes, then they get the prescription "pinged" through from the GP for everything, which they then issue and get paid for everything they've issued. A cynical person may suggest that they tick all the boxes to make more profit!

Likewise, at our GP surgery, the GP partners also own the attached pharmacy and despite ticking only the items we need on the online ordering system, we often get everything issued. Likewise, a cynic could say the GP's do that as they're going to make profit on the drugs issued via the pharmacy!