Charity rejects drug donation claim

Wednesday 11 October 2017

A local charity has distanced itself from a notice urging islanders to hand in unwanted medicines to be sent to poor communities in Romania.

An islander posted a photo of a flyer spotted in St Mary’s Community Centre on a Facebook page with more than 7,500 members which asked for the medicines to be handed in to a Les Quennevais-based charity shop, which is currently being used to raise funds for Friends of Ecce Homo Trust.

“…Their resident doctor and pharmacist sorts them out and where practicable send the items to Romania. There is a huge waste of medicine in Jersey and if some benefit could be made from this it is only a good thing!” the notice read. 

Published on a Facebook community group with nearly 8,000 followers, the notice was viewed by potentially thousands of islanders, sparking debate before later being taken down. Dozens of islanders commented on the photo – many praising the initiative, but others expressing concerns over the legality of the anonymous shop’s apparent pharmacy drug donation scheme.

Pictured: A photo of the poster, which was posted on a Facebook group with more than 10,000 users.

Investigation by Express revealed that the shop in question is currently collecting on behalf of Friends of Ecce Homo Trust, a Romania-registered non-governmental Christian charity which provides aid to vulnerable adults and children.

But Chairperson Rosemary Coote MBE said that it “definitely wasn’t us that put anything like [the poster] up."

Although the charity had previously and infrequently handled donations of a medical nature and passed those to a doctor in Romania to be sorted, she said that this was not something they were actively soliciting because the charity “don’t know what [they’d] end up with.”

Most donations tended to be for personal hygiene rather than prescription medicines, she explained. “It happens irregularly if people have had Tena pads or sanitary towels or things like that that have been opened, then people won’t use them after that or give them to anybody else to use. We’re very happy to take them onto Romania." 

Pictured: The shop is based at Les Quennevais Parade.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) advises against donating prescription medicines, arguing that if the intended user doesn’t want them, then it isn’t right to donate them to a third country. Health and Social Services do not reuse medicine in Jersey.

A spokesperson for the department urged islanders to follow the correct procedure when disposing of unwanted pharmaceuticals. 

“We follow WHO guidance in Jersey and do not re-use medicines that have been returned by patients; consequently, we would not endorse any campaign for medicines to be recycled by other organisations.

"Medicines that are no longer required should be returned to a pharmacy for safe disposal,” they said.