Development of Model Grocery Stores from the Civil State Project on Collective Action for Drugs Safety in Communities

Abstract

Objective: To develop model grocery stores selling safe drugs by cooperation between store owners and network of partners, and to establish network of partners to monitor the sale of inappropriate drugs in the grocery stores. Method: This study was action research. The researcher selected 45 groceries with drug distribution. The activities in the study consisted of meetings to plan the study with partners of the network, namely the competent officials, sub-district headman, village headmen and the village health volunteers (VHV), a memorandum of mutual understanding between officials, community leaders, and VHV together with store owners, educating store owners, the survey of drug items sold, and the measurement of knowledge amonggrocery owners with knowledge test. Results: Resolutions from the meeting to plan for the actions among network partners and store owners was identification of sale of inappropriate drugs would lead to the implementation of measures in the following order: alert, issue a documented warning, drug seizure or withhold and prosecution. The results of the survey of the sale of prohibited drugs from grocery stores in 4 rounds revealed that the sale of prohibited drugs significantly decreased (P <0.001). Knowledge of store owners increased significantly (P <0.001). Appropriate drug storage in groceries improved from 56.3% to 88.9%. Implementation of the measures resulted in 25 model groceries accounted for 55.6% of all groceries. Conclusions: For the sustainability of drug safety in the community, there should be an ongoing training of grocery owners and the surveillance by the officials together with the network partners in order to ensure legal compliance among grocery owners.