Portsmouth City Teaching Primary Care Trust was launching a campaign today to raise awareness of the problem with the help of Portsmouth North MP Sarah McCarthy-Fry.

The cash lost could have paid for 300 hip replacements, 2,100 cataract operations or 45 extra community nurses.

Patients will be encouraged to have regular reviews of their medicines with their pharmacist or doctor.

They will also be reminded to take medication with them when they go into hospital.

Leaflets will be put on walls in GP surgeries and pharmacies to remind patients about the medicines wastage message.

Trust head of medicines management Katie Hovenden said: 'Patients sometimes order and collect medicines on their repeat prescriptions that they don't need.

'When people are taking a number of drugs it can be easy to forget.

'Wasted medicines are wasted money. We want to invest this money in health services that will benefit local people.'

In a joint statement, Dr Charles Lewis from Sunnyside Practice and Sam Al-Sultan, a pharmacist at Lloyds in the Pompey Centre, Fratton Way, Portsmouth, said: 'If you have any medicines you no longer need at home you can return them to the pharmacy for safe disposal.

'It isn't safe to have unwanted drugs in the home where they may put others, particularly children, at risk.'