In Are you willing to swallow a recycled pill?, Dr David Pencheon, director of the national NHS Sustainable Development Unit, tells us "An estimated £300m of medicines are wasted each year in England, but around £89m could be saved by making a 2.5% reduction in medicines wastage."(2012, ¶ 13). He also says that recycling medicine could make the NHS become more sustainable financially and environmentally. It is suddenly going to be a great saving when we garuntee the reused drugs that it is safe for patients. However, it still has a significant question whether patients want to take these reused pills. After polling 1,000 people, he found that 52% tent to use these pills, but 19% will not take it. Futhermore, the NHS also trys to find the ways to prevent diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease in order not to use pills for cure.
I think that the NHS is a good organization which try to help the world by imitating carbon emission and reused drugs is a good way to help it, because I am a person who always waste a lot of pills after I get over from my illness. Sometime I still have remain pills after I am better, but I have no idea to deal with them. It may be more benefits to take them for recycle which at the present nobody takes responsibility about.
If I have to take reused drugs, I still have many questions. For example, how do you assure that they are safe because I now cannot imagine the way to assemble and manage several kind of medicines with diverse brand, different expiration date and different ways to keep them before bringing them to recycle. I think that it will be easier to make people accept reused drugs by make them clear how to assure them.
References
Dr David Pencheon. (2012, March 2). Are you willing to swallow a recycled pill? Retrieved March 16, 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17219584
I want to comment, but I think I need to read Mart's source and perhaps learn a bit more first. The idea of taking recycled pills doesn't attract me, but if it's done right and they are actually manufactured fresh from the raw materials, I wouldn't mind.
ReplyDeleteBut I think way to many pills are taken. When I see a doctor in Bangkok, they usually prescribe antibiotics or whatever I might really need, but also things for pain, sleep and symptom reduction. I usually tell them I don't want them, or just throw them away. It's a very wasteful habit, and I think it's mainly the fault of irresponsible doctors.
Doctors know a lot about medicine, but they are often not so well qualified in other areas, like social or health policy, which are very different. And perhaps they should not be blindly trusted on personal health issues either.
I think expiration of reused pill is very important.Reused pills had better are used in hospital because they can be kept according expitation and categories,furthermore,reused pill had better just be used one more time.Actually in medicine,doctors'professional ethics are more important than every kind of pharmacons.
ReplyDelete