Jharkhand is a tribal dominated state, where most of the Population resides in remote rural areas, which needs timely medical facilities as well as timely availability of essential medicines. In the absence of timely medicine, many people become seriously ill or die untimely. To deal with this situation, Chief Minister Hemant Soren has directed to set up at least one medicine shop in every village panchayat of every district of the state to make medicines easily available to the villagers. Under this, so far 543 applications have been approved for drug stores in the entire state.
So far, a total of 1593 applications have been received from all over the state for setting up medicine shops at the Gram Panchayat level. Of these, 543 applications have been approved, while 962 applications are under process. Maximum 233 applications have been received from Deoghar, 230 from Giridih, 212 from Dhanbad, 138 from Ranchi, 102 from Godda, 85 from Palamu and 75 from Hazaribagh and Bokaro respectively. On the other hand, in Chatra last days three people were given approval letters by the Chief Minister and a medicine shop was inaugurated there.
On the instructions of the Chief Minister, the presence of a pharmacist has not been made mandatory for the sale of medicines. License for medicine shop is being issued in Form 20A and 21A. If needed, all types of medicines will be made available to the villagers through the retail chemist. The aim of the Chief Minister is to provide medicines to the villagers on time and to increase the means of EMPLOYMENT and Source Of Income to the educated villagers.
On the instructions of the Chief Minister, tele-medicine and tele-consultancy facilities will be made available free of cost to the villagers of the concerned panchayat by the licensee in coordination with the departmental helpline number 104. Estimated assistance will be made available to the licensees under the Chief Minister’s Employment Guarantee Program by the Welfare Department. The Block Development Officer of the concerned block has been directed to provide assistance to the interested and eligible licensees in getting loan from the bank by establishing mutual coordination.