Public Health Management- Disposal of Date Expired Drugs An Empirical Study

We generally notice drugs that have outlived their expiry dates being consumed by acquaintances without a second thought. This tendency or inclination is done mainly with the objective of saving money that has already been spent on the medication, unmindful that the outcome of such action could lead to serious ill effects or counter illness. Secondly, citizens who are aware of such ill effects duly and promptly dispose off such drugs that have crossed their shelf life, oblivious of the proper ways of disposal and the effects of careless disposal of drugs that have crossed expiry dates.Before embarking on presenting this paper for the National Conference on ‘Multilevel Interventions for Health Care: Framing New Inclusive Health Policies, ’ the authors made a survey of friends, acquaintances and public, regarding disposal of unused and date expired drugs at their homes.The structured interview and discussions with people around brought out many shocking and dangerous practices being followed by the people though, many of the respondents were highly educated and well aware of their wrong and unmindful actions. This paper tries to analyze the effects of drug disposal, taking into view the observations from pharmacists, druggists, and also from available literature on the subject, in the city of Mysore. The paper further tries to emphasize the most suitable method of disposal of drugs and its effect on the environment.