Despite the lack of medicine, tons of tablets end up in the trash

Article from the “Observator”

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This article was first published in the paid offer of beobachter.ch. Blick+ users have exclusive access as part of their subscription. You can find more exciting articles at www.beobachter.ch.

Stop medication waste with small packaging

In a report published the same year, the Federal Office for Public Health wrote about the three causes of the enormous mountain of waste: the doctors who prescribe too large quantities, the manufacturers who produce too large packages and the patients, who struggle medically advice and throw away medications instead of taking them.

A recipe to prevent medicines from being wasted: buy the smallest possible packages or even individual pills if it is clear from the start that you only need a medicine for a short period of time. Certain pharmacies offer the service of daily dosing, known in jargon as blistering. It is actually there to increase medication safety when a patient has to take multiple medications.

Selling individual tablets is not that easy

From the perspective of Jürg Wüthrich, director of Mydose, it would theoretically be possible to order five individually packaged painkillers in this way. According to its own information, the blister packaging supplier supplies approximately 70 pharmacies and 200 households with individually packaged medi-mixes. In practice, such individual purchases are not easy. On the one hand, health insurers only pay for blisters if you use three different medications. If you order only one medicine, you will pay more than 20 francs out of your own pocket from the provider Mydose.

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On the other hand, according to the Federal Office for National Economic Supply, only partial quantities should be dispensed if there is a bottleneck in the supply of the drug and it remains sterile packaged despite being dispensed separately. Canned liquids or capsules may therefore not be sold in single doses.

Test of retail sales of antibiotics

In recent years, there have been repeated initiatives in parliament to combat medicine waste. Most recently in March by Manuela Weichelt, politician of the Zug Green Party. In an interpellation, she asked the Federal Council how efforts to distribute antibiotics individually began and whether this form of administration could be used for other medicines.

When it comes to individual antibiotic distribution, the federal government expects that the first results of preliminary research will be available by the end of this year; a similar trial is not planned for other drugs. For the time being, thousands of tons of pills will probably end up in the trash – despite the sometimes acute shortage.