Billing for your medical store in Tripura
A full strip, a half strip and a single tablet, each billed with its GST and counted from the shelf.
Hill, plantation and farm districts: where a Tripura medicine counter's customers live
A medicine counter in Tripura serves people in farm and hill districts. Here are two of them, and what their sites say.
- In Dhalai district, 76% of workers depend on agriculture; the district site names poor marketing facilities as a reason for backwardness, though NH 44 connects it.
- South Tripura's economy rests on agriculture, animal resources and fisheries: paddy, pineapple, jackfruit and banana are grown, with tea gardens, rubber and bamboo plantations.
What a medical store with a wholesaler far away can write down before it runs out
Low stock warnings
A level for each medicine that matters, so the list of what is running low is on your phone before the wholesaler's man arrives.
Daily reports
The noon rush and the quiet evening read side by side, so you see how many slips the clinic hour really sends.
Orders to suppliers
The order to the wholesaler and a note of what the van brought when the wet road let it through, so the missing strips are on the list the same night.
Why a strip cut for two tablets and a medicine that is not on the shelf cost a Tripura chemist so much
Mosquito coils, repellents and rehydration salts are gone in the first wet week
When the rains begin, the shelf of coils, repellents and rehydration salts empties in days. You find out when the fifth customer asks, and the wholesaler's van is slowed by the wet roads. The first week of the rains is the week the shop is most often caught short.
Two names on one slip: the person who buys and the patient who takes
A son buys for his mother who lives two bus rides away, and a neighbour collects for a sick man. The bill must say who bought, and the page must say whose medicines these are. In the notebook both are written under the buyer's name, and months later nobody is sure whose medicines were whose. When the son comes again, he cannot remember which of his mother's medicines were new, and you cannot tell him from the notebook.
The last strip of a regular's sugar tablets went at noon
A regular who takes tablets for sugar comes at four in the afternoon for his monthly strip. The last one sold at noon, and the next van is days away. He goes without, or buys from a far shop, and he does not come back to you for his other medicines either. Nothing on the shelf warned you that the strip was the last.
From the half strip at the window to the elder who comes on the same date each month
The rainy-season basket is on the order list before the first rains
Mosquito coils, repellents and rehydration salts are the first things to go when the wet weeks come, and the wet road makes the van slow to bring more. Read the three side by side on the low list while the roads are dry, and order them together.
The page carries the patient's name, though the son or the neighbour does the buying
Give the patient a page and bill the son's or the neighbour's collection there. The page says whose medicines these are, and the bill says who collected them. When the rains come again, the page shows what the patient took in the wet weeks last time, and you do not trust the collector's face.
The order list is already made when the wholesaler's man arrives
On the wet road a second trip by the wholesaler's man is a week lost. He finds the whole order said once, medicine by medicine with the exact strips, because the shelf was looked at the day before he came. What is forgotten waits for the next dry day.
Questions Tripura medical stores ask
A village health worker takes medicines for a sub-centre and pays at the end of the month. Do I give the sub-centre a page?
Yes. A page can belong to a person, a family or an office. Bill each collection under its name, and the month's total is on the page when the payment comes.
A woman from a hill village phones to ask if a medicine is on the shelf before she walks to town. Can I tell her?
Yes. Every bill takes its quantity off the count, so the count of that medicine is on your phone. You look, tell her yes or no, and she does not walk for nothing.
The wholesaler's man says the van will be a week late. Which medicines on my list can wait?
Split the late van by what cannot wait: fever medicines first, stomach medicines next, rehydration salts after, then the rest. Write the three in that order on the order with the number for the week, and ask for the rest when the van comes.
A consumer state and the rains: what Tripura's medicine shops live with
Tripura's Drugs Control Administration says the state is a consumer state for pharmaceuticals, as it has no manufacturing unit. The medicines on a Tripura shelf are made elsewhere, so a shop's link with its wholesaler matters.
With the onset of the rainy season in 2022, Tripura saw a spike in malaria cases in remote parts of Dhalai, Gomati and South Tripura, a National Health Mission official said. For a shop in those parts, the rains are a season when the order list changes.