Improper Management of Pharmaceutical Waste in South and South-East Asian Regions

Medical wastes entered our ecosystem owing to improper disposal practice which exploited as pollutants and posed huge threat to the public health, economy and eco-system. This review had scrutinized and illustrated the erroneous drug disposal practice, their possible threats, and proposed several probable solutions for proper pharmaceutical waste management. Findings of this study claimed immediate attention of the government especially of the developing countries like South and South-East Asian (SSEA) to develop policies in order to abolish all the implementation obstacles. The literature studied includes 66% of pharmaceuticals waste generated from households, 13% from community pharmacy and 20% from hospital pharmacy from year 2009 to 2015 in SSEA regions. In most of the cases, liquid pharmaceuticals were disposed via toilet/sink and solid dosage forms were discarded via trash/bin. Acknowledgment of proper drug disposal and hazardous consequences of improper disposal varied among each category of the participants. Although awareness among healthcare professionals was higher, still no useful actions had been taken. Besides the drug take-back program, other alternative economical ways are highlighted to reduce the generation of unused/expired medicines. Advancements of technical innovations and involvement of environmental scientists, physicians, pharmacists and media are also indispensible to raise awareness.