Billing for your medical store in Assam
The flood week's camp order, the daily tablet that must not run out and a bill that survives a lost slip.
When the water rises: the camp's order, the wet shelf and the neighbour with a list
The first customers in a flood week are the volunteers
When the water rises, a volunteer group comes in before the patients do. They want packets of ORS and fever strips for a relief camp, many at once, and they say the office will pay later. You give them what they need, because the camp cannot wait, and you write the names and the numbers on a scrap that is gone by the time the office asks.
The water goes down and nobody knows what the shelf lost
The lowest shelf was under water for a night. When the shop is dry you look at the boxes and the bottles and cannot tell what is gone and what is only wet on the outside. The supplier asks what the water took, and you have a feeling and not a number, because nobody set the stock list from before the water against a count of the lowest shelf after it.
A family cut off by water sends a neighbour with a list and a promise
The road is under water for the family but not for the neighbour who has a boat or a strong pair of legs. He arrives with a scrap of paper and the family's name, and he has no money, because the money is on the family's phone. You pack from the list, you are not sure of the strength of one of the tablets, and you have no way to show the family what was sent.
Tools for a counter that stays open when the road is under water
Credit book (khata)
A page for a relief camp or a volunteer group, every packet and strip dated, paid in one go when the office releases the money.
Godown stock
The upper room and the counter counted apart, so after a flood week you know which of the two lost what.
UPI payments
A QR code, or a link on WhatsApp, for the family cut off by water, paid from its own phone while the neighbour waits with the list.
A river port, tea plains and paddy fields: who walks into an Assam medical store
A medical store in Assam serves river towns, tea plains and paddy fields. A few of the districts, and what they are known for.
- Under the British, Tezpur became an important centre of trade and commerce, used as a river port for the surrounding tea gardens.
- Cachar is known for its tea plantations; paddy, vegetables, pulses and tea are grown on the plains along the Barak river.
- Dhubri depends mainly on agriculture and forest products; paddy is the main income and jute and mustard seed are the major cash crops.
From the camp's page to the camp kit packed forty at a time
The volunteers' night order, written on the page as it is packed
Open a page named for the group that came at night and put each packet of ORS and each strip of fever tablets on it as you pack, with its day. When the office asks next week, you hand over the page, and nobody signs from a half-remembered night.
The camp kit as one item, packed in the number the camp asks for
Make a camp kit an item with a rate: so many ORS packets, so many fever strips, a roll of cotton. When the volunteers ask for forty kits, one line on the bill carries forty, and the stock of each medicine inside comes down by what the kits held, so the shelf is a number again by the time the boat leaves.
The neighbour's packet, billed to the family and paid from its own phone
Make the bill in the family's name from the neighbour's list, and send it to the family on WhatsApp so that it sees each medicine and its rate before the packet leaves. The family pays by UPI from its own phone, the neighbour carries the packet, and nobody carries cash through the water.
What Assam medical stores ask about relief camps, daily tablets and lost slips
The supplier asks me to prove what the flood took. What do I show him?
Show the stock list on the phone from before the water and the count of the lowest shelf afterwards. The lines where the two do not match, medicine by medicine, are the loss you show him. The upper room that stayed dry is not in it.
The neighbour's list names a tablet but not its strength. How do I make sure I pack the right one?
Name each tablet in the list with its strength, so the one on the neighbour's scrap is found by name. You pack the item the list names, and the family reads the same line on the bill before the packet leaves.
Families who take tablets every day for diabetes or high pressure still come in the flood week. How do I know which of those is nearly out?
Keep each of those tablets as its own item with a low-stock warning, so it is on the list before the shelf is bare. While the road is shut, read the count of these first each morning.
The 2026 floods, and the tablets people cannot stop
In Assam's 2026 floods in Jorhat, Sivasagar and Charaideo, volunteers named waterborne disease and fever as the greatest threat, along with a lack of medicines for chronic illness. A medical store is where the first of those is met, and the camp orders and fever strips it hands out are its record of that week.
Flood survivors in these Assam districts who must take medicines daily, such as for diabetes or high blood pressure, suffer when medicine shortages hit. For a store this makes the count of those tablets the one most worth watching in a flood week.