Around 260 kilos of unused medicines with a conservative value of over a £250,000 have been disposed of over a two week GHA campaign.
‘Dispose of unwanted medicines’ was a campaign held in October with 21 pharmacies taking part.
Speaking at the Health Authority’s public meeting last night, the interim Chief Pharmacist, explained calculations were based on around 10% of the medicines returned.
The GHA spends around £11million on medicines a year and Ed Freestone said a realistic figure of the value of medicines that go to waste in Gibraltar is probably between £500,000 and a million pounds.
This he said was something that had to be addressed by the whole community.
Questions were also asked on whether people exchanged prescription items for other pharmaceuticals with the GHA Director General, Patrick Geoghegan asking anyone aware of this practice to report it.
