In a situation where roads are closed or the power is out, the pharmacy is shut, the practice is overloaded and the ambulance service is there for the serious cases. Everything you can treat yourself, you should then be able to treat yourself. That is exactly what the medicine cabinet is for, and for most people it is a shoebox of expired leftovers. Here is the list from the German Federal Office of Civil Protection, translated into active ingredients, so it still holds when your usual product happens to be out of stock.
This post is no substitute for medical or pharmaceutical advice. Dosages, interactions and the question of what suits you personally are settled by a pharmacist in five minutes, and that is time well spent.
Two lists, one cupboard
A medicine cabinet has two parts that are bought separately. The first is dressing material, and there the answer is simple: a car first-aid kit to the German DIN 13164 standard. It is cheap, available everywhere, and contains compresses, wound dressings, plasters, triangular bandages, a foil blanket, disposable gloves and scissors in quantities that are enough for a family. The second part is the medicines, and that is where the thinking starts.
The civil protection list in active ingredients
The BBK names categories such as "painkillers" or "remedies for diarrhoea". The table replaces them with active ingredients. The reason: an active ingredient stays right when the brand changes, and at the pharmacy you always get the cheapest product under the ingredient name.
| Purpose | Active ingredient or item | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Pain, fever | Ibuprofen and paracetamol | Two different mechanisms that can be alternated if needed. Ibuprofen also works against inflammation but strains the stomach and kidneys; paracetamol is gentle on the stomach but has a strict daily maximum because of the liver. Neither for more than three days without medical advice. |
| Diarrhoea | Loperamide; oral rehydration salts | Loperamide only briefly, not with fever or bloody diarrhoea and not for children under twelve. Fluid replacement matters more: rehydration sachets from the pharmacy, or in a pinch one litre of boiled water with six level teaspoons of sugar and half a level teaspoon of salt. |
| Nausea, vomiting | Dimenhydrinate | Causes drowsiness. For children only in the age-appropriate form and dose. |
| Colds | Decongestant nasal spray (xylometazoline), cough syrup with ivy extract, lozenges | Nasal spray for a week at most. For children their own syrup strengths from one year, nasal spray in children's dosage. |
| Allergy, insect bites | Cetirizine or loratadine; cooling gel with an antihistamine | Anyone with a known severe allergy needs their emergency kit from the doctor; that is on no standard list. |
| Wounds, skin | Wound antiseptic with octenidine or polyhexanide, wound-healing ointment, burn dressing | Alcohol stings, and iodine is off limits for infants and anyone with a thyroid condition; octenidine is neither. |
| Hands | Alcohol-based hand sanitiser | When there is no running water it replaces washing hands before eating and after the toilet. Half a litre for ten days is realistic. |
| Measuring and cooling | Thermometer, instant cold packs, tweezers, tick card | Snap-to-activate cold packs need no fridge. The thermometer with a spare battery. |
| Sun | Sunscreen, after-sun treatment | Sounds like holiday, but it is the injury that actually happens while hauling sandbags in July. |
For children, additionally: everything in the suitable form (syrup, suppository) and dosed by weight, no acetylsalicylic acid, and keep the measuring aid that comes with the product. A look at the leaflet costs less than a call to the poison control centre, whose number you nonetheless write on the emergency card.
The gap: regular medication
The standard list helps with a cold and a grazed knee. The real danger in a crisis lies elsewhere: insulin, blood pressure medication, thyroid hormones, anti-epileptics, asthma inhalers, anticoagulants. Anyone who depends on these needs a reserve in the medicine cabinet, and it does not appear by itself, because health insurance usually prescribes for the current quarter. Three steps:
- Talk to the doctor. Ask for the large pack and collect the repeat prescription when two weeks of supply are still left, not when the pack is empty. Over time that builds a reserve of two to four weeks without anything expiring, because you always take the oldest pack first.
- Have the medication plan on paper. In Germany you are entitled to one from your doctor from three prescribed medicines onwards; it belongs in the emergency document folder and as a copy in the emergency backpack. A dead phone knows no dosages.
- Sort out the cooling. Insulin and some biologics must stay cool. Without power that means a cool box with ice packs that were in the freezer beforehand, and a thermometer in the box. The post on the power outage has the timings for how long cooling lasts.
Storing and maintaining
The medicine cabinet does not belong in the bathroom. It is damp and warm there, and both shorten shelf life. A lockable cupboard in the hallway or bedroom is right: cool, dry, dark, out of children's reach. Everything stays in the original packaging with the leaflet, because loose blister strips carry neither name nor date.
Twice a year, go through it. Expiry dates on tablets are usually generous; on opened liquids they are not: eye drops keep four weeks after opening, syrups and nasal sprays a few weeks to months, the figure is on the packaging. Write the opening date on the bottle. Expired items go in the household waste, which is the right route in most German municipalities; some pharmacies take them back, and they never go down the drain.
And where this lives in Keepilo
That twice-yearly check is exactly the step that gets skipped, and then the thermometer is dead when it matters and the nasal spray expired three years ago. In Keepilo the medicine cabinet therefore goes into the inventory like the food stock: every item with its expiry date, and the overview shows what runs out in the coming weeks without you opening the cupboard. The medical card for each household member records regular medication, allergies and conditions, and from it come the credit-card-sized emergency cards that sit in the wallet when the phone is dead. All of it on the device, with no account and no cloud, because health data belongs nowhere else.