Shas­tri Boodan

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.

Now, the new Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to­ward up­dat­ing the pro­gramme.

On Sat­ur­day, Bo­doe al­so con­firmed that Cab­i­net had ap­proved a re­quest by DATT to ac­quire con­tin­u­ous glu­cose mon­i­tor­ing de­vices for chil­dren liv­ing with di­a­betes, with pro­cure­ment ex­pect­ed to be­gin in the up­com­ing fis­cal year.

He said the Min­istry has ex­tend­ed op­er­at­ing hours at health cen­tres and is work­ing to stan­dard­ise Di­a­betes Well­ness Clin­ics (DWCs) across the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties. These clin­ics func­tion as “in­ten­sive di­a­betes boot­camps,” of­fer­ing mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary care to pa­tients re­ferred from Chron­ic Dis­ease Clin­ics. As of De­cem­ber 2024, 2,147 peo­ple were en­rolled—90.6 per­cent of whom were be­ing treat­ed for un­con­trolled Type 2 Di­a­betes.

The Min­is­ter al­so out­lined new ini­tia­tives in di­a­bet­ic foot care, in­clud­ing the roll­out of a na­tion­al screen­ing tool across health cen­tres and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of spe­cialised of­fload­ing boots to re­duce the risk of am­pu­ta­tion.

In 2024, the pub­lic health sys­tem per­formed 484 ma­jor low­er limb am­pu­ta­tions, 269 of which were at­trib­uted to di­a­betes.

Bo­doe closed by call­ing for a broad­er re­sponse to chron­ic dis­ease: “The fight against NCDs and di­a­betes in par­tic­u­lar can­not on­ly rest on the shoul­ders of the doc­tors, nurs­es and oth­ers with­in the health­care in­dus­try alone.”