PATIENTS are wasting £2million in NHS cash each year in East Lancashire by failing to use prescribed drugs.

Health bosses today revealed the cash could have paid for a scheme to provide cataract operations for more than 2,000 people, due to begin this week.

A major campaign has now been launched to stop people from ordering medicines they don't need.

The range of medicines vary from ordinary painkillers to more expensive drugs - with one person in Burnley returning a month's supply of anti-infective tablets costing £1,200.

The campaign, One Pot Pays For All, gives out the message that the NHS is not a bottomless pit of money and that waste in one area can affect others.

It is being spearheaded by the Medicines Management Team of Cumbria and Lancashire's Strategic Health Authority, supported by the area's three NHS primary care trusts (PCTs).

A mobile operating theatre will begin a five-year rolling cataract programme in Rossendale on Wednesday and Thursday, which will see 2,110 people undergo treatment.

A team of South African surgeons has been hired by Lancashire's Strategic Health Authority to perform operations on 1,140 people in Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale, 570 patients from Blackburn and Darwen, and 400 from Hyndburn and the Ribble Valley.

The health authority's chief executive, Pearse Butler, said: "If money is wasted by people getting medicines they do not use, then something else in the NHS suffers."

In East Lancashire, at least £1.4million in medicine is returned to community pharmacists and an additional £500,000 is either flushed down the toilet or thrown away.

In Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale PCT - one of the largest in the country, serving 250,000 people - drugs costing around £750,000 are returned unused each year. They can not be re-issued and must be destroyed.

That amounts to two per cent of the prescribing budget, with each prescription costing on average just under £10. Patients who pay for prescriptions pay £6.40 per item.

In Blackburn with Darwen, at least £500,000 of unused medicines are returned. Last year, that amounted to nearly 2.4 tons.

Across Lancashire, the NHS loses at least £5million per year through unused prescriptions, which could be used to fun other vital services.

Catherine Harding, head of medicines management for Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale PCT, said: "There is no such thing as a free prescription. Everything has to be paid for, whether used or not, though the most expensive medicine is one never taken."