Disposal Practices of Leftover Medicines Among University of Rwanda Undergraduate Students

University students typically use prescribed or non-prescribed medications, often resulting in the accumulation of leftover medications. Hence, understanding their disposal practices is crucial, as improper disposal contribute to significant public health and environmental risks.

This study intended to assess the disposal practices of leftover medications among undergraduate students at the University of Rwanda, as well as the factors influencing these practices.

The participants were randomly selected for this cross-sectional study. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire, and responses were entered into Microsoft Excel for cleaning. The cleaned data were imported into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0 for analysis. Using SPSS, Inferential statistics, notably Pearson's chi-square test, was used to determine variables associated with the disposal practices, with a p-value <0.05 considered significant.

Out of 378 students, 66.1% had leftover medications, with 21.2% keeping them for future use. Just 7.1% returned them to pharmacies, while 92.9% resorted to improper disposal practices, with the main methods being discarding them in the toilet (36.3%) and household rubbish (24.6%). Key reasons cited by 81.2% were that neither a drug take-back system was introduced on campus nor were disposal procedures communicated. Gender (x ²=9.735, p-value=0.046), level of study (x ²=8.331, p-value˂001), and college (x ²=9.735, p-value=0.046),and lack of training (x ²=35.66, p-value˂001), and lack of understanding about a drug take-back system (x ²=36.72, p-value˂001) were significantly associated with improper disposal practices.

Leftover medications and improper disposal practices were prevalent, mostly caused by lack of awareness about proper disposal practices. This underscores the need to raise public awareness.