Rural areas should also set up expired medicine collection points

Recently, the village and community collection points for household expired medicines in Zhuhai officially began operating, encouraging residents to hand in expired medicines from their homes to community medicine collection points. More than 100 boxes of expired and ineffective medicines were collected on the first day.

Whether in cities or rural areas, many households have some expired medicines. Expired medicine means the medicine has lost its efficacy, deteriorated or become moldy; if taken accidentally, it can harm health. Moreover, if expired medicines are handled improperly and thrown away as ordinary garbage, the toxic components in them will decompose and pollute both soil and water sources. There are even some unscrupulous traders who reprocess expired medicines with intact packaging and put them back on the market, bringing great hidden dangers to village residents' medication.

Some cities in China launched designated collection of expired medicines long ago, but in most rural areas, expired medicine collection work is still a blank. By extending expired medicine collection from urban districts to villages and community groups, Zhuhai is undoubtedly helping to manage the collection of rural expired medicines well, and this is worth promoting. Of course, publicity should also be strengthened so that awareness of expired medicine collection reaches families and schools, raises villagers' awareness of expired medicine collection, and makes expired medicine collection in rural areas routine and institutionalized.