Fair price medical shop reopened

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Thanks to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and P K Raju, member of the SAT Hospital Development Committee, the fair price shop in front of the SAT Hospital has now become functional again. The direction to open the shop counter came after Raju submitted a request to Chandy at the Chief Minister’s Grievance Redressal Cell.The fair price shop, a blessing to the hundreds of patients at SAT Hospital, Regional Cancer Centre and Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, had been closed down for the last ten days on frivolous charges. This had caused enormous hardships to the patients as the medical shops elsewhere charged nearly 40 percent more for the medicines, especially the life-saving drugs.  The difference in the prices are huge, sometimes running into thousands of rupees. From the cost of an IV set, which is cheaper by Rs 20 at the store, to the critical life saving drug Globucel, which is cheaper by almost Rs 8,000, there are a whole lot of antibiotics, immunoglobulins and enzymes that come at a discounted rate.A fifth generation antibiotic Duratiz 4.5, antibiotics given in intensive care such as Tazact and Piptaz, medicines such as Erypro and Ranimum Dioral used in patients with kidney transplant, Sitrodin for human albumin and insulin are some of other much sought-after medicines at the shop.While most medical shops in the medical college area close by 11 in the night, patients are forced to depend on the medical stores in the private hospitals such as KIMS or COSMO, where they do not get any discount on the price.In certain emergency situations like snake-bites and accidents which require emergency surgery, the patients were left high and dry as the fair price counter was not functional.Apart from the memorandum given to the Chief Minister by Raju, the Thiruvananthapuram district committee of the AIYF had asked the State Government to take up the issue with due seriousness. AIYF district committee president Meenankal Kumar and secretary Kaladi Jayachandran had asked for the immediate reopening of the fair price shop.Thanks to all the efforts, the medical shop is now fully functional and the patients have been saved of a lot of trouble.