Even though vaccines are slowly rolling out across the country, COVID-19 is still out there and people have every right to be as cautious as possible. If you’re still hesitant to leave your house then you may want to consider downloading PharmaGo. Having just launched in South Africa today, PharmaGo is a free mobile app which, “facilitates same-day and next-day deliveries of essential medications and over-the-counter medication to those in need, at the click of a button,” reads the press release.
Basically, if you’re in desperate need of either a prescription medicine or something over-the-counter then you can log into PharmaGo, place an order and your meds will be dropped off in as little as an hour. Of course, that time frame is dependant on how far away you live from the nearest participating pharmacy. There are currently 73 pharmacies participating in the app’s distribution network nationwide. Basically, it’s UberEats but with medication (which UberEats actually also delivers).
PharmaGo go go!
Payments for prescriptions can be loaded into the app and payments can be conducted with both credit and debit cards or you can simply add a medical aid submission directly into the app. The idea for the app came from WITS graduate Raees Carim, who saw a need for such an app when an immune-compromised relative couldn’t get the necessary meds he needed after hours.
“We’ve already seen the power – and necessity – of PharmaGo in our initial launch phase,” says Carim. “We’ve received urgent orders and have been able to facilitate delivery within the same day. It’s gratifying to be able to help people access medication when they need it, in a convenient and secure way – while also being able to deliver daily essentials to customers without them needing to leave the house”.
We at Stuff played around with the app briefly today and thought it worked rather well. The process of registering yourself onto the service can be a bit finicky but once you’re in, everything seems to function as promised. We can’t speak for the delivery time but one has to imagine that they’re decent enough.
Carim continued on to say, “We’re looking to expand into deliveries of products beyond the pharmaceutical space, and so are going to be expanding into the health, wellness and beauty space,” he says.