Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has as­sured the pub­lic that the min­istry is work­ing to ad­dress short­ages of drugs un­der the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP), say­ing 49 of the pro­gramme’s 52 drug items are cur­rent­ly avail­able.

Bo­doe gave the up­date yes­ter­day be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC), where he an­swered ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion MPs Colm Im­bert, Stu­art Young and Hans Des Vi­gnes on the Min­istry of Health’s $7.474 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in the 2027 Bud­get.

Young asked whether the min­istry’s re­view of the CDAP list had con­tributed to cur­rent short­ages.

Bo­doe said the pro­gramme had 53 es­sen­tial items serv­ing close to 300,000 cit­i­zens through 89 pri­vate phar­ma­cies. Ac­cord­ing to a re­cent up­date, he said, short­ages af­fect­ed three chron­ic dis­ease ar­eas, while 49 of the 52 items were avail­able.

Asked whether he was aware of the short­ages and work­ing to ad­dress them, Bo­doe replied: “We’re work­ing on it.”

He added that al­ter­na­tive drugs were avail­able where short­ages oc­curred.

Bo­doe ac­knowl­edged “the oc­ca­sion­al drug short­age here and there for di­a­betes and some can­cers” and said sup­ply-chain and pro­cure­ment is­sues were be­ing ad­dressed.

“I want to give the pop­u­la­tion the as­sur­ance that the sup­ply chain and pro­cure­ment is­sues sur­round­ing this mat­ter are be­ing dealt with. The CDAP pro­gramme re­mains an im­por­tant one for cit­i­zens, and we’ll con­tin­ue strength­en­ing it,” he said.

Young al­so queried the $33 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for CDAP drugs in 2027. Bo­doe said the al­lo­ca­tion had in­creased from $29.9 mil­lion in 2026. The $33 mil­lion al­so cov­ered drugs for heart and can­cer pa­tients, he said.

Fol­low­ing a re­view of the CDAP list, the min­istry in­clud­ed some new and more ad­vanced med­ica­tions.

Asked whether the changes would ease short­ages by widen­ing the range of drugs, Bo­doe said some old­er drugs had been re­placed with new­er ones, while the pro­gramme still had 52 drug line items.

He said the min­istry was al­so work­ing to cre­ate a more cen­tralised, mod­ern fa­cil­i­ty for drug stor­age to re­place the cur­rent lo­ca­tion at Ch­aguara­mas.

Bo­doe said the min­istry was al­so “close to” open­ing the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Cen­tral Block. How­ev­er, a prop­er walk­way is need­ed to link the block to the hos­pi­tal’s Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency sec­tion, he said, as pa­tient trans­fers are cur­rent­ly chal­leng­ing. He said the is­sue would be fixed.

“The min­istry will con­tin­ue ef­forts to ful­ly op­er­a­tionalise all pub­lic health care in­sti­tu­tions in fis­cal 2027,” Bo­doe said.

In his open­ing state­ment, the min­is­ter iden­ti­fied child­hood obe­si­ty as a ma­jor health pri­or­i­ty.

“Re­duc­ing child­hood obe­si­ty is a ma­jor goal of this ad­min­is­tra­tion. It is one of the ways of pro­tect­ing the fu­ture of our na­tion’s chil­dren, while re­cent in­no­v­a­tive amend­ments to the Chil­dren’s Life Fund au­thor­i­ty con­tin­ue cater­ing for chil­dren re­quir­ing treat­ment for com­plex con­di­tions,” he said.

Bo­doe said chron­ic dis­eases, al­so known as non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs), re­mained Trinidad and To­ba­go’s biggest health and eco­nom­ic chal­lenge, ac­count­ing for 62 per cent of an­nu­al deaths.

“Sug­ar re­mains an en­e­my of the health of our peo­ple. Lim­it­ing its use is next on our list of health pro­tec­tion mea­sures to be ad­vanced,” he said.

He al­so praised or­gan­is­ers and par­tic­i­pants in the fre­quent 5K events and health fairs, say­ing they were help­ing to re­verse seden­tary lifestyles, a ma­jor risk fac­tor for NCDs.

Asked about sup­ply fund­ing and re­ports of short­ages of gloves and urine strips at the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties (RHAs), Bo­doe said the en­ti­ties could make ad hoc pur­chas­es to sup­ple­ment sup­plies where nec­es­sary.

On fund­ing for pay­ments, Bo­doe said the al­lo­ca­tion had in­creased by $8 mil­lion to $36 mil­lion to ac­count for changes re­sult­ing from wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

In re­sponse to Im­bert’s ques­tions, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo said the al­lo­ca­tion did not in­clude “100 per cent of any back­pay, as the mat­ter is still un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.” Bo­doe al­so con­firmed that $50 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed for back­pay re­lat­ed to wage in­creas­es.

Tan­coo said the re­vised 2026 es­ti­mate in­clud­ed par­tial pay­ment for ar­rears paid last De­cem­ber, and that a pro­vi­sion­al es­ti­mate had been made for 2027.

Bo­doe al­so con­firmed in­creased fund­ing for UNC Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tees, along­side re­duced costs for elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter bills and oth­er ar­eas. I

mbert queried re­duc­tions in al­lo­ca­tions for min­istry pay­ments, in­clud­ing group health in­sur­ance for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, in­sur­ance for RHA and month­ly paid work­ers, and work­ers’ al­lowances.

Bo­doe said the min­istry was pre­pared in the event of the emer­gence of the new Sha­mon­da virus, fol­low­ing a fa­tal­i­ty in France yes­ter­day. The in­sect-borne virus has his­tor­i­cal­ly af­fect­ed live­stock in parts of Africa and Asia, and more re­cent­ly Eu­rope, but had not pre­vi­ous­ly been doc­u­ment­ed in a hu­man.