Medication Expiry

Despite these shortages, medications are expiring at both local and mail-order pharmacies.

During pharmacy onboarding visits, we observed patients in queues seeking medications unavailable at one location. At another pharmacy, several packs of the required medication were found, but they had expired. The pharmacist noted that no one had come to pick them up in recent months.

So here is the situation, on one hand, there is a drug shortage. On the other hand, drugs are available elsewhere but remain undiscovered by those who need them.

This occurs because there is no easy way to know or predict what is available in a pharmacy in real time. Globally, the volume of expired medicines is growing at an alarming rate due to ineffective supply chain management.

The main problem is not solely shortages but medications being distributed to locations where they are not needed, with no efficient mechanism for redirection before expiry.

Research indicates that the total cost of disposing of or storing expired drugs amounts to billions of dollars annually.

A study on expired medications in a healthcare facility in an emerging market illustrates the scale of this issue.