Safe Kids Wayne County and the Goldsboro Police Department are partnering to hold Operation Medicine Drop on Friday at the Goldsboro Events Center.
The event is being held from 9 a.m. to Noon and is being hosted by the Peggy M. Seegars Senior Center and the Goldsboro Parks and Recreation Department.
Operation Medicine Drop provides the community with a safe place to drop off unused, unwanted, and expired prescriptions and over-the-counter medications to be properly destroyed. The community is encouraged to bring medications in their original containers.
Anyone wishing to mark out their personal information on a medicine bottle may do so, but event organizers ask that the name of the medication still be legible for logging purposes.
According to Safe Kids Worldwide, 47,000 children under the age of six, or five children per hour, are seen in emergency rooms every year for medicine poisoning.
“Of course, people lose loved ones, people that maybe were sick to cancer, and we’ve had people share that these events allowed them to have closure from losing their loved one or losing their family member by getting rid of medication that might otherwise be sitting around their house,” said Shelly Willis, Safe Kids Wayne County Coordinator. “There are medication drop boxes around Wayne County, but this event gives people a target date to get their medications cleaned out and make sure they’re disposed of.”
Medicine drop events have been taking place in Wayne County for more than a decade, and the impact through lives saved continues to be felt throughout the county.
“These events are very important because of course, medications that are sitting around the house and aren’t being taken can end up in the wrong hands,” Willis said. “It can end up in the hands of older family members that inadvertently take them. They can end up in the hands of children. A lot of medications look like candy. So children don’t know what they’re into, they very well may think it’s candy. So, we like to get all the medications that aren’t being used out of the household and we tell people who come as well, if you do take medications keep them stored up and away so that small children can’t get a hold of them. There are lock boxes now that are extremely affordable just so people can make sure medications don’t end up in the wrong hands.”
National Poison Prevent Week is Mar. 17 through 23, and Safe Kids Wayne County is holding a pair of medicine drop events that week.
Dudley Christian Church is hosting a drive-thru medicine drop from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Mar. 20. The Wayne County Health Department is hosting a drive-thru medicine drop from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Mar. 22.
