The Gov­ern­ment is re­view­ing the list of med­ica­tions of­fered un­der the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP), with Health Min­is­ter Dr Lakram Bo­doe con­firm­ing that con­sul­ta­tions have al­ready be­gun.

“We are look­ing at the drugs used to treat the NCDs—di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion and so on,” Bo­doe said dur­ing a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day host­ed by the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (DATT). “The re­view has start­ed and will go for­ward to best meet the needs of the pop­u­la­tion,” he added. He said the process would con­sid­er fi­nan­cial con­straints in the up­com­ing bud­get cy­cle and wel­comed in­put from or­gan­i­sa­tions such as DATT.

The an­nounce­ment comes just over a year af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was crit­i­cised for telling Par­lia­ment it had be­come “quite dif­fi­cult” to fi­nance free med­ica­tion, in­clud­ing drugs un­der CDAP. At the time, Im­bert stressed that gov­ern­ment spend­ing on health­care had risen ex­po­nen­tial­ly over the past two decades—from $1 bil­lion when he was Health Min­is­ter in the ear­ly 2000s to near­ly $8 bil­lion in 2024. He warned the coun­try must en­sure val­ue for mon­ey, but in­sist­ed there were no plans to cut the CDAP pro­gramme.