Inter Care – Medical Aid for Africa collects returned patient medicines free of charge from GP practices that have registered as collectors. These are then taken to our secure warehouse where they are quality controlled by our panel of volunteer doctors, nurses and pharmacists.

Medicines that Inter Care can re-use need to be:

• Complete with their original packaging. 

• At least 15 months from expiry. 

• Not visibly tampered with or damaged in any way. 

If medicines are taken back to a chemist in the UK, the pharmacist is obliged to dispose of them either as landfill or by incineration, with all the environmental consequences that these involve. If however they are returned to a GP practice which is registered with Inter Care and are suitable they will be recycled.

Medicines which Inter Care cannot re-use are bagged up in clinical waste containers and are disposed of in accordance with current regulations.  

Twice a year each of our 116 health units in Africa receives a consignment of the medicines that they have requested and so crucially need.

There are numerous reasons why patients do not take the medicines prescribed for them in the UK,  but these unused medicines are literally lifesavers to people in desperately poor parts of Africa who would otherwise be unable to afford them, or even in some cases may be treated at a health centre that simply cannot obtain them. 

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