Easington Primary Care Trust (PCT) has launched a campaign to raise the awareness about the wastage of medicines.

The campaign is also urging patients about the importance of ordering only the medication needed from repeat prescriptions.

It was in October 2002 that the PCT first asked residents in east Durham to have a "clean sweep" and clear out their medicine cabinets of all out of date or unused medicines given on prescription or bought from a pharmacy.

The amount collected as a result of the campaign has enabled the PCT to estimate that each year £250,000 is wasted in the Easington area.

Even when medicines are returned to a pharmacy they cannot be reused and so the value of the medicine is lost.

The PCT has calculated that without the wastage it could have afforded eight more nurses, 42 hip replacements, 125,000 more NHS dental appointments or 365 cataracts treated.

Medicines, it believes, are sometimes ordered "just in case" and stockpiles build up at home.

The PCT is now urging that if there is a medicine patients have on a repeat prescription which they no longer need they should inform their GP.

Sue Bentley, Medicines Management Project Facilitator for Easington PCT, said: "This campaign is part of the ongoing work of the PCT's medicines management programme which aims to provide better services and medicines information to patients."