In the Netherlands more than 100 million euros worth of medicines are being thrown away each year. Medicines that are being returned to pharmacies must be destroyed. We urge the government to ensure that returned medicines may be used instead of being burned.
the undersigned of this petition
that weekly thousands of kilos of unused medicines are being returned to pharmacies in the Netherlands,
that the applicable laws stipulate for these medicines to be destroyed,
that these medicines could still safely be used and are still effective,
that elsewhere in the world medicines are desperately needed (the obvious example at the moment being the crisis in Ukraine).
Secretary of State Ernst Kuipers:
to give permission to collect, transport and donate the collected medicines, provided the conditions stated below have been met,
to constructively assist in passing the changes in the law which are required to make good use of these medicines in future, instead of having them destroyed.
N.B. The argument that is being used to justify this waste, is that the quality of the medicines cannot be guaranteed. This is an important point. Therefore, we urge to limit the collection to only those medicines that do not require special storage conditions, of which the original packaging is unopened and which is in date. Collection will be done by physicians and pharmacists.
Hoewel ik het tegengaan van verspilling zeer belangrijk vind, kan ik het verzoek in de petitie en aangenomen motie niet uitvoeren. Ik zou daarmee Europese wetgeving overtreden.
Nederland moet zich namelijk houden aan Europese regels. Europese regels staan heruitgifte van medicijnen niet toe vanuit het doel dat iedereen in Europa kan vertrouwen op kwalitatief goede en veilige medicijnen. Bij heruitgifte is de kwaliteit noch de veiligheid gegarandeerd.
Een medicijn dat eenmaal aan een patiënt is verstrekt, mag daarom niet opnieuw aan een andere patiënt gegeven worden. Ook niet in een crisissituatie of als het om donatie gaat
Kiah Williams, Co-Founder of SIRUM Kiah Williams and her team at SIRUM scaled up in 2020. As the largest medicine redistributor in the U.S., SIRUM connects Americans in need with surplus prescription medicine.
They’ve already redistributed nearly $85 million worth of medicine - and are going full speed ahead to expand this impact even further.
Kiah Williams and her team at SIRUM will deliver $772M worth of medication to 1M people over the next five years.
Kiah Williams & SIRUM will deliver $772M worth of medication to 1M people over the next five years. TED
This year, SIRUM was chosen as a participant of The Audacious Project, a funding collaborative housed at TED. With The Audacious Project’s support, the organization will grow their supply of donated medicines tenfold and expand their platform to seven new states. The outcome? SIRUM will deliver $772 million worth of medication to one million people over the next five years.
On march 23, the House of Representatives in the Netherlands passed a motion on redistributing medicines. The redistribution of medicines is only permitted under European law if certain requirements are met.
In 2020, there was a short pilot project for the collection en redistribution of medicines in the Dutch province of Brabant. The public health inspection ordered it to stop, because it did not fulfill the requirements of European legislation. In this article, we discuss the possibilities to continue this pilot project, within the limits of European legislation. We state that shelf life extension of certain medicines might be possible, to save costs and resources, reduce shortages of medicines and eventually aid other countries.