Asda ups healthcare offer with diabetes tests
Supermarket group adds to pharmacy services
June 17 2003
Asda has added to its range of in-store pharmacy services by launching a free diabetes screening service.
With an estimated 1m undiagnosed diabetics in the UK, 82 Asda stores with pharmacies will offer a week long programme of free tests for shoppers to help identify the condition.
The offer will help to draw customer attention to the Wal-Mart owned UK supermarket retailer’s pharmacy offer, seen as an area for sales growth by Asda as well as rivals such as Tesco.
With 11m customers a week, up to 250,000 of ASDA’s customers could have undiagnosed diabetes. The free diabetes intervention services will be managed by its trained network of professional pharmacists. The service will use equipment available at Wal-Mart stores to identify if a person has raised blood glucose levels, drawing on Wal-Mart’s expertise as one of the largest US pharmacy chains.
Support is also being offered to those who’ve already been diagnosed, with a range of blood glucose meters rolled back in price by up to 40 per cent and store tours led by dieticians will give people with diabetes advice on healthy eating.
Asda superintendent pharmacist John Evans said: “Millions of customers a week visit our stores – and large number will have undiagnosed diabetes. We hope to find hundreds of them over the next week. Free diabetic screening is the latest pharmacy service provided at Asda. In recent months it has offered blood pressure monitoring and flu jabs to customers.
“The programme is an example of the kind of community-based pharmacy initiative that Asda is ready to provide in all stores should the government deregulate the way pharmacy licences are granted later this year.”
