Practice regarding disposal of expired and unused medicines among students of University of Science, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

Expired and unused medicine can be mistakenly reused. This fact endangers the health, especially the elderly and young children. Currently, Vietnam has no regulations and guidelines on how to collect and dispose expired/unused medicines in households. Consequently, how expired/ unused medicines are disposed remain unknown. This study was conducted to investigate the students practice of disposing medicine. The survey was conducted in March 2020, using the "snowball" method on the social networks to spread the google form questionnaires to 525 students of University of Science. Survey results showed that 73.5% of students were keeping at least one unused over-the-counter drug at home while only 36.5% of students kept prescription drugs. The most common medications keeping unused at home are pain relievers and antipyretics (nonprescription groups) and antibiotics (prescription groups). Regarding the expired drugs, more than 80% of students said that they would throw away, nearly 10% keep at home, and 5% return to the pharmacy. For unwanted medicines, 70% of respondents keep at home, 20% will dispose and 15% will give to others. The most common way of the medicine disposal is to dispose together with the household solid waste. The study recorded that 84% students dispose medicines in household waste bin and 8% (likely living in rural area) burn with household solid waste. Disposing medicines with solid waste mean that the large amount of medicines would end up in the landfill. This raised a risk of groundwater contamination from the leachate in landfills. Nearly 80% of students participating in the survey believe that issuing and disseminating instructions for drug disposal and setting up collection points at hospitals and pharmacies is necessary. The study proposed a method to dispose of expired/unused medicines at