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In order to avoid environmental hazards due to pharmaceutical products, the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) is thinking of framing a ‘Disposal Policy’ for removing the unused and date-expired drugs from the sale premises and from the households.
For this, a separate committee has been formed by the DoP, in which the Kerala drug controller is the only member representing state regulators.
The DoP finds that the unscientific disposal of the expired drugs by the consumers and traders is the primary reason for environmental pollution. When the disposal policy is out, there will be guidelines for how to dispose of expired drugs from the market and at the household premises. The separate committee formed for the purpose has started to discuss the issue in detail and shortly it will frame a draft policy to be submitted to the government, said Dr. Sujith Kumar, drug controller of Kerala.
It was the Kerala DC department that started a novel project in 2018 to tackle the unsafe disposal of expired and unused drugs from drug shops and houses, by joining with the drug traders, AKCDA. Together they launched the “Programme on Removal of Unused Drugs’ or PROUD which is still in operation in the district of Thiruvananthapuram. As part of the project, drug collection boxes were kept at selected retail shops to facilitate people to drop the expired or unused medicines from their houses. The shops can also dump their unsold and expired drugs into the boxes. The department will collect the boxes and send them to an agency for destroying them in incinerators.
The DoP came to know of the success of this project and decided to take it as a model programme for the disposal policy. That is why the drug controller of Kerala has been included in the committee formed for the purpose of framing the disposal policy.
Dr. Sujith Kumar said, in the wake of the rising antimicrobial resistance worldwide, the World Health Organisation has called for developing policies for safe disposal of expired medicines, especially antibiotics. He said several studies have shown that antibiotic residues and antibiotic resistance lead to serious environmental and health risks. Quoting WHO, he said unscientific disposal of expired, leftover, substandard, spurious and adulterated medicines is one of the most significant factors for antimicrobial resistance among animals and human beings. According to him, the department of drug control in Kerala plans to implement the PROUD programme in all the districts of the state from October onwards.
The PROUD project was introduced in the state by the former drug controller, Dr. Revi S Menon in association with the All Kerala Chemists and Druggists Association. Recently, he has written a letter to the Department of Pharmaceuticals highlighting the necessity for replicating the same throughout the country in the wake of the rising AMR. Further he put a suggestion to the Pharmacy Council of India to include ‘Ecopharmacovigilance’ (EPV) in the curriculum of the pharmacy courses giving priority to take back of unused medicines from household and sale premises to prevent environmental pollution.
AN Mohan, president of the All Kerala Chemists and Druggists Association, said the association will give full support to the drug controller for the extension of the PROUD project to all the districts in the state.
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