Storing medicine safely in a South African home
Heat, load-shedding and curious toddlers — the three things most likely to ruin your medicine or cause an accident.
Heat is the main enemy
Most medicines are meant to be stored below 25 °C and away from light and moisture. A car parked in the sun, a windowsill, or a room under a tin roof in a Lowveld summer comfortably exceeds that.
- Never leave medicine in a car. A closed car in summer gets far hotter than the air outside, quickly.
- The bathroom cabinet is a poor choice despite the name — steam and heat both degrade medicines. A bedroom cupboard is better.
- Keep things in their original packaging. The box and the blister protect from light and moisture, and they carry the expiry date and batch number.
- Do not decant tablets into unlabelled containers. A weekly organiser is fine for the week ahead; long-term storage should stay in the original pack.
Fridge medicines and load-shedding
Some medicines — insulin isophane (nph) and other insulins, certain injectables, some liquid antibiotics once mixed — need refrigeration, usually between 2 °C and 8 °C.
A closed fridge holds its temperature for several hours, so ordinary scheduled load-shedding is generally not a problem provided the door stays shut. The practical risks are longer outages and the opposite mistake.
- Keep fridge medicines in the body of the fridge, away from the back wall and the freezer compartment.
- During long outages keep the door closed rather than checking on it.
- A cooler bag with a cold pack works for transport — wrap so the medicine is not in direct contact with the pack.
- If you are unsure whether something got too warm or too cold, ask a pharmacist rather than guessing. Insulin that has been damaged may look normal.
Keeping medicine away from children
Child poisoning from medicine is common and is nearly always accidental, in the home, with something belonging to an adult in the household. Sweet-tasting syrups and colourful tablets are particularly attractive.
- Store medicines high and out of sight — a handbag on a chair is one of the most common places a child finds them.
- Use child-resistant caps and close them properly. Child-resistant is not child-proof.
- Never describe medicine as sweets to get a child to take it.
- Take particular care with visitors' medicines and with a grandparent's weekly organiser, which usually has no child-resistant closure at all.
Expired and leftover medicine
The expiry date is the point up to which the manufacturer guarantees full strength in unopened, correctly stored packaging. After it, the main risk is that the medicine is weaker than it should be — which matters a great deal for an antibiotic, a rescue inhaler or an emergency medicine.
Do not throw old medicines in household refuse or flush them, where they reach water and other people. Take them to a pharmacy, which can dispose of them properly. And do not pass leftover prescription medicine — particularly antibiotics — on to family or friends, however similar their symptoms seem.
Common questions
- Is medicine still safe a month after the expiry date?
- It is likely to have lost some potency rather than become toxic, but that is a real problem for antibiotics, inhalers and anything you rely on in an emergency. Replace them, and ask a pharmacist if you are unsure about a specific product.
- My insulin was out of the fridge overnight. Can I use it?
- It depends on the product and how warm it got — many insulins tolerate a period at room temperature, and an in-use pen is often kept out deliberately. Check the leaflet and ask a pharmacist rather than assuming either way.
Sources
- Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines ListNational Department of Health, South Africa
- Poisons Information Helpline of the Western CapeTygerberg and Red Cross Poison Information Centres
Last reviewed 4 August 2026.