Paul Bass Photo
Leslie Asanga was on a mission as he popped out of a rented Mitsubishi Wednesday — to help seniors and other vulnerable people get their medicine without risk of contracting Covid-19.
He headed into an apartment complex on Elm Street near the Boulevard in search of a woman who needed a prescription filled but didn’t want to venture into a pharmacy to pick it up. Her partner has a compromised immune system, so Covid-19 could kill her.
Asanga has launched a service to make pharamacy deliveries. He got the idea while working the pharmacy department of a local CVS as the pandemic started. “I felt bad for the elderly and immuno-compromised people exposing themselves” at the counter.
Asanga grew up in Cameroon. He moved to town last year from Las Vegas to study in Yale School of Public Health’s accelerated program for people with advanced degrees in the field. He already had a Doctor of Pharmacy degree and an MBA; he wanted to add skills to take on broader public health challenges.
For three weeks he enlisted fellow volunteers at Yale to launch a home-delivery pharmacy service. Forty signed up. A fellow student named Leonardo Lizdinski designed a website. They called it Pills2Me.com. It offers free prescription pick-up and then home delivery.
Asanga found the right door and knocked. He called for the customer to wait a moment. “I’ll put it in the door, then you can open it.” He placed the bag by the door and hopped back to the courtyard.
“All good,” he called.
Erin Townsend emerged to pick up the prescription. She was grateful for the delivery.
She and her partner are venturing out only occasionally, to the water at Long Wharf early in the morning or at sunset or, once, at Hammonassett when cloudy weather kept away other visitors. “I haven’t been to a place with people for a month and a half,” reported Townsend, who worked in Yale’s humanities department.
She at first ordered her medication delivered through a service offered by Yale’s health plan. But that proved a hassle to complete, and delivery took weeks. She had ordered from Asanga’s Pills2Me that same morning, hours before he arrived.
Townsend thanked Asanga, from a distance. Then Asanga headed back to the Mitsubishi, on to his next delivery — and bigger plans.
Townsend’s was his 18th delivery since the website went live. Word is getting out, and many more people are signing up. Asanga and his team plan to ramp up: Once an app goes live, customers and drivers will be connected more quickly.
The plan is to begin delivering to some paying customers as well: younger people who aren’t immuno-compromised but would still appreciate the convenience.
Next week he intends to launch a second operation in Las Vegas, then in other cities. Asanga said he hopes to use the revenue from healthier customers to pay more drivers to make free deliveries to people in need — and to keep the operation going after the pandemic passes.