Drug store data now just a click away
Sports — By The Desk on March 14, 2011 at 11:48 AM
Indian Express: All the 600-odd drug stores in the city and details of medicine stock of each will be on the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website by month-end or the first week of April.
This exercise, to streamline operation of chemists, will shortly be replicated across the state.
Stock, registration number and licence number of each drug store, along with details like location and whether it will be open 24 hours or not, will be on the FDA website.
FDA officials say 70 per cent of work has been completed. “The work was taken up in January and will be completed by the end of this month or by the first week of April. Our staff was pulled out for the census drive and so there has been a slight delay. We have all data with us,” said joint commissioner, FDA (Pune division) ST Patil.
A software designed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) is being used for the streamlining exercise. Data from Pune city is divided into four zones covering Peth, Aundh-Baner, PCMC and Hadapsar and Phursungi areas. Patil said details of each shop, with name of the pharmacist and registration numbers, have been compiled,
Details of available stock, date of issue of licence and its expiry, too, will form part of the data. The stores will be categorised into those open 24 hours and those which are closed at night. The data will be segregated areawise, too.
Patil said the state will be among the first to have such details on website and every district will collect the data in three months. “Gujarat was the first to start it and we followed but we will complete the work before them,” he added.
The FDA is also tying up with Maharashtra State Pharmacy Council in Mumbai so that details of even pharmacists who operate drug stores can also be part of the data.
“Repeated checks can be conducted and reports readied for any information required by the state government, with this data,” adds Patil.
As of now, FDA Pune division has 13 clerks, 12 food inspectors, 4 drug inspectors and five assistant commissioners. Repeated pleas to the state government for more staff have fallen on deaf ears. “We have been requesting the government to allot more people for our initiatives,” says Patil.
District Chemists Association chief coordinator Mahendra Pitaliya said it is a good initiative by the FDA. “Though there is data available, streamlining it and making it available to public through website will definitely help people,” says Pitaliya.
Satish Mehta, an IT professional who had shifted to Pune this year from Jharkhand, said that it would help to know which of these drugstores are open 24 hours for any kind help during night hours. “Such data will be helpful as one can call and place orders,” said Mehta.
