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Karnataka Chemists & Druggists Association (KC&DA) is insisting that all pharmacy retailers should ensure that cut strips, discarded expired medicines should not be thrown into garbage, instead they need to be returned to the respective manufacturers.
In the case of wholesalers, they will need to return expired medicines to their principal manufacturing and marketing companies. The drug manufacturers will need to take on the onus to destroy these drugs in a safe and environment friendly manner, said AK Jeevan, general secretary, Karnataka Chemists & Druggists Association.
The decision by the Association comes in following the failure of a related pilot project to take off. In May this year, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) identified Satva Health Solutions to initiate a pilot project on innovative methods to manage discarded medicines. This according to Satva was an effort for the first time in the country. The state pollution control board had initiated efforts to regulate the disposal of expiry dated drugs and through the Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules 2016 which had methods of disposal of expiry drugs. Sources informed that the project has come to a standstill.
It was also informed that standard operating procedures on discarded and cytotoxic waste management was also ready. The trial run of the project indicated that 1,000 pharmacists in Karnataka with 33 per cent registrations, collected about 1,000 kg of waste. The company was keen to help in waste management and was to visit the pharmacy outlets across the 30 districts in Karnataka to enroll more members..
In order to give a fillip to the KSPCB and Satva efforts, the government of Karnataka was to come out with an ‘expired drug disposal policy’ in June-July 2016. “All efforts to dispose off expired drugs valued over Rs. 10 crore stored in warehouses of the health department will be made within the next six months. The policy will be finalised by next month and expired drugs stored from the past 14 years in warehouses will be disposed,” said the Karnataka minister for health and family welfare U T Khadar.
But there was a change of guard with a new health minister KR Ramesh Kumar taking over from from minister Khader and the issue of discarded and expiry dated drugs is yet to be looked into.
Following the non-take off of this project, Karnataka Chemists & Druggists Association took up the onus to make the pharmacy retail and wholesale accountable for the cut strips, discarded expired medicines which should not be thrown indiscriminately into the garbage instead to be sent back to the suppliers, said Jeevan.
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