Ali­cia Llanos

There is no short­age of med­ica­tion pro­vid­ed un­der the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP). This was dis­closed yes­ter­day by Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis at the min­istry's Christ­mas lun­cheon at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain. She was re­spond­ing to a news­pa­per re­port (not the T&T Guardian) yes­ter­day which claimed some phar­ma­cies had re­port­ed a short­age of drugs list­ed in the CDAP, such as Tim­o­lol used to treat glau­co­ma.

Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said she was "alarmed" by the re­port and con­tact­ed the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec), the body re­spon­si­ble for or­der­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals on be­half of the min­istry for the pro­gramme. She said Nipdec in­formed her there was no short­age and pro­vid­ed her with a press re­lease dis­miss­ing the re­port.

Quot­ing Nipdec's re­lease, Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis ex­plained that some phar­ma­cies ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ties get­ting sup­plies from Nipdec's cen­tral stores over the last few months. That had noth­ing to do with drug ship­ments but was a re­sult of ad­verse ef­fects ex­pe­ri­enced by staff af­ter the fa­cil­i­ty was sprayed. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said de­spite hav­ing to de­vi­ate from its nor­mal pat­tern of dis­tri­b­u­tion, Nipdec as­sured that all emer­gency and pri­or­i­ty or­ders were ful­filled.

She said in re­gards to the avail­abil­i­ty of Tim­o­lol eye drops, Nipdec said there were ad­e­quate sup­plies in the sys­tem un­til the end of No­vem­ber 2010. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said Nipdec in­formed her that a new ship­ment ar­rived in No­vem­ber but due to the Christ­mas rush, the drug was on­ly cleared off the port last Mon­day. She said all phar­ma­cies in need of the eye drops would re­ceive them to­day. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said phar­ma­cies named in the news­pa­per re­port con­tact­ed the min­istry yes­ter­day to dis­pel state­ments made in the re­port and con­firmed they had re­ceived CDAP sup­plies.