Donate medicines

Patients do not take the medicines prescribed for them for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes people are discharged from hospital with a bag of medicines to take home just in case they suffer certain symptoms – for example they may be given some extra-strong painkillers in case they suffer severe pain after an operation.

Sometimes a medicine doesn't suit the patient and they go back to their doctor to get something different. Sometimes the patient gets better and doesn't need the medicine after all, and sometimes sadly the patient dies.

These unused medicines are literally life-savers 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. If they 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, some of them can be re-cycled.