WS Chronicle

After months of working through red tape, Southside Discount Pharmacy is now a COVID-19 vaccination site. 

Ahuma Freeman, who is the founder and owner of Southside Discount Pharmacy, said the process to become a vaccination site took a lot of paperwork and training, but they started receiving doses of the Moderna vaccine last month and they’ve already administered over 1,200 doses. 

Southside Discount Pharmacy, located at 3085 Waughton St., has been in operation since 2014. While finishing up her degree at Campbell University, Freeman completed her clinical training at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital, which brought her to Winston-Salem and closer to her future husband, who was working for Dell at the time. After graduating from college and working at several big-name pharmacies for nearly a decade, Freeman said she realized that she wanted more out of her profession. She said much of the focus at big-name pharmacies is making money, but she wanted to really help people lead healthier lives and understand the medications they were taking. 

“I was working at the CVS on MLK and that’s when the lightbulb went off,” Freeman said. “I saw a lot of issues at that location … A lot of patients there needed someone to actually sit down and explain what was going on and the medications and it just wasn’t there because it was always go, go, go, go and I knew I didn’t want to keep going back to that.” 

Freeman said although she knew she didn’t have enough money to open her own pharmacy, she started doing the research anyway and things just started falling into place. “Me and my husband put a business plan together, presented it to the bank, and just hoped that somebody believed in it,” she said. 

And someone did believe. Freeman said it was a lot of hard work in the beginning, but it gave her the peace she was looking for. “I could go to sleep knowing that I was really healing my patients and that they were listening,” she said. 

When talks about the vaccine started, Freeman said she admits she was a little skeptical because not a lot of research had been done beforehand. But after learning more about the vaccine, seeing the number of deaths increasing every day, and continued requests from patients, Freeman decided to get the vaccine herself and apply to become a vaccination site. 

The process took months of filling out paperwork before beginning training could even start and then they had to wait a few more weeks to receive the vaccine. 

“It was a learning process for everyone so you can’t be mad, but there were a lot of requests and a lot of paperwork,” Freeman continued. “But we just kept doing the paperwork, doing the webinars, just trying to stay in the loop and then finally everything was good to go.” 

On Wednesday, April 7, Southside Discount Pharmacy administered its 1,000th dose of the vaccine. According to Freeman, the vaccine is free of charge. Southside Discount Pharmacy is taking patients with and without insurance. Freeman said they aren’t focusing on insurance because they want to make sure everyone who needs the vaccine gets it. The pharmacy has also partnered with other organizations in the area to host vaccine clinics. 

“We’ve partnered with a couple  of organizations that have interests that are aligned with what we’re doing, the preventive help, and watching out for those people who don’t really have it or may need that extra support,” Freeman said. 

To schedule an appointment to receive the vaccine, visit https://southsidediscountrx.com/ or call 336-830-8774.