Use and wastage of prescribed medicines in the home.

A survey of prescribed medicines was carried out in 192 homes, broadly representative of households in England and Wales. The average home had 3.2 containers of such medicines; 56 per cent were in current use, 16 per cent in occasional use, and 28 per cent were never used. One fifth of all oral antibiotics found in the study were wasted. A rough estimate suggests that pound23 million of prescription products (5.6 per cent of the total) are wasted annually in England and Wales.