Huge amounts of prescription drugs are wasted every year, according to a survey commissioned by BBC1's Watchdog Healthcheck programme.
The survey, reported in a broadcast on February 7, found that each year a third of the population failed to complete a course of prescribed medication while one in 10 collected prescriptions but did not even start to take them. A quarter of all adults admitted to having unused medicines in their homes.
To illustrate the size of the waste problem, presenter Angela Rippon was shown visiting a Cambridgeshire pharmacy where returned medicines worth several hundred pounds were awaiting destruction. In a recorded interview, the National Pharmaceutical Association's head of professional services, Mrs Collette McCreedy, said that the NPA had estimated that medicines worth about £37.6m were disposed of every year, although the true figure was probably much larger when one allowed for medicines piled up in people's homes or being disposed of by other means.

Angela Rippon with a bucketful of medicines returned to a pharmacy for disposal

A Cambridge general medical practitioner, Mr Mike Knapton, told the programme that repeat prescribing, which made up two-thirds of all prescriptions, was responsible for much of the wastage.
Interviewed by Ms Rippon at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's headquarters, the Society's head of professional and scientific support, Mr Roger Odd, said that doctors did not get the time actually to deal with patients, and particularly those on repeat medication, every time they visited the surgery. That was why the Society believed that pharmacists had a real role to play in enabling patients' medication to be reviewed at regular intervals. The programme went on to draw attention to the Department of Health's pilot repeat dispensing scheme, in which the pharmacist has the discretion to dispense repeats after discussion with the patient.
The programme concluded by stating that, according to the Department of Health, drug wastage was to be added to the agenda for discussions on the following day between Lord Hunt (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State) and the Society.

Mr Odd explains the benefits of medication review by pharmacists