The National Health Security Office (NHSO) and the Pharmacy Council of Thailand invited drug stores to distribute medicine to COVID-19 patients and monitor their conditions and about 700 drug stores have participated.
Preecha Bhandtivej, vice president of the Pharmacy Council, said there were many COVID-19 patients who had no or mild symptoms and they would otherwise crowd hospitals if they sought treatment there.
Therefore, the council and the NHSO directed them to receive medicine and advice from pharmacists at drug stores. The policy applied to green-coded patients who were younger than 60 years old, he said.
Such COVID-19 cases could contact drug stores, scan a QR code to verify their identity under the NHSO system and receive medicine free of charge. Pharmacists will hand a set of medicine that matches their conditions and follow up their symptoms for 48 hours. If their conditions worsen, they will be sent to doctors.
The treatment scheme applied to the holders of golden health welfare cards, government officials and staff of local administrative organizations and still excluded Social Security Fund members. The Social Security Office could work out the participation of Social Security Fund members with the Pharmacy Council, Mr Preecha said.
Over 700 drug stores were interested in participating in the project and about 440 of them were already registered with the NHSO for the purpose. The list of the participating drug stores is at https://www.nhso.go.th/downloads/197.
More information is available at tel. 1330 and the NHSO’s LINE account at https://lin.ee/zzn3pU6. (TNA)
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