Abstract

ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE REGARDING DISPOSAL OF UNUSED AND EXPIRED MEDICINES

Shrikalp Deshpande*, Javid Mansuri, Krishna Maisuria, Kashish Patel, Vidhi Patel, Margi Patel

ABSTRACT

In the last few years incidence of disease rate is increase with that for the preventing purpose medicine use is also increase. People bought the medicines but not adhere all the medicines for some various reason and got expired. Lack of knowledge regarding the proper disposal practice of expired and unused medicines it cause dangerous harm to the environment. In year of decades many researches are done in other countries. Even they developed some disposal practice for expired medicines and for unused medicines they started drug take back polices as the result of the different studies while in India there are very less studies are done. A Observational question based study was conducted for 2 different sites for 6 months. Objectives of this study was to assess knowledge, attitude and practice on safe disposal of expired medicines. To study the factors influencing keeping unused medicines at home. Study the class of the drug which remain unused. Calculate the total cost of unused medicines. Develop the disposal practice. Data for this study was collected by questionnaire asked to the individual subject. Based on the questionnaires subject knowledge, attitude and practice review regarding disposal of unused and expired medicines. 220 participants participate in this study. Response of participants show that most common factor for keeping unused medicines at home is to give to family members and neighbours when they get need in future. Participants knowledge show that they knew about medicines not to use after expiry date but didn’t knew about proper disposal practice of unused and expired medicines. They have positive attitude that improper disposal of unused and expired medicines affect the environment and health and awareness programs should be initiated for how to dispose unused or expired medicines. In disposal practice most participants throw the medicines in trash/ garden while some of the flushed in toilets. Reponses of the participants show that very less participants return medicines to the medical store which show that India have lesser implemented the take- back policy.

Keywords: “Knowlegde”, “Attitude”, “Disposal Ptractice”, “Unused and Expired”, “Medicines”.