Five new med­ica­tions have been added to the re­vised Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP) which will pro­vide up­dat­ed treat­ment for more than 300,000 cit­i­zens.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day the Min­istry of Health an­nounced that the changes took ef­fect on Oc­to­ber 1.

The new med­ica­tion will be used to treat high blood pres­sure, pre­vent blood cots and strokes, low­er cho­les­terol and treat with de­pres­sion, autism and schiz­o­phre­nia.

The Halth Min­istry said the new med­ica­tion comes af­ter a com­pre­hen­sive re­view com­mis­sioned by Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe on June 5, this year.

The min­istry said the CDAP Re­view Com­mit­tee was tasked with as­sess­ing the pro­gramme’s clin­i­cal, op­er­a­tional, and fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. Find­ings high­light­ed the need to mod­ernise CDAP’s struc­ture, up­date its drug list, and strength­en di­ag­nos­tic ser­vices to re­flect cur­rent med­ical re­al­i­ties.

It said as part of the up­date, the fol­low­ing med­i­cines are now avail­able un­der CDAP, along with their pri­ma­ry us­es:

Losar­tan Potas­si­um 50mg tablets – used to treat high blood pres­sure and help pro­tect the kid­neys in pa­tients with di­a­betes.

Clopi­do­grel Bisul­phate 75mg tablets – an an­tiplatelet med­i­cine that pre­vents blood clots, re­duc­ing the risk of heart at­tacks and strokes.

Risperi­done 2mg tablets – an an­tipsy­chot­ic used to man­age con­di­tions such as schiz­o­phre­nia, bipo­lar dis­or­der, and ir­ri­tabil­i­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with autism.

Ser­tra­line 50mg tablets – an an­ti­de­pres­sant com­mon­ly pre­scribed for de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, and ob­ses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der.

Ro­su­vas­tatin 20mg tablets – used to low­er cho­les­terol and re­duce the risk of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease.

Min­is­ter Bo­doe em­pha­sised the sig­nif­i­cance of the up­dat­ed pro­gramme, stat­ing, “The re­view of CDAP not on­ly en­sures safer and more ef­fec­tive med­i­cines for more than 300,000 cit­i­zens, but greater ac­cess, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, stronger di­ag­nos­tics, and cost sav­ings, all aimed at de­liv­er­ing high­er qual­i­ty care and greater val­ue for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

CDAP was of­fi­cial­ly launched on Feb­ru­ary 21, 2003. Ini­tial­ly, the pro­gramme aimed to pro­vide free pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tions to cit­i­zens aged 65 and over suf­fer­ing from chron­ic con­di­tions such as di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, asth­ma, and cer­tain car­diac dis­eases.

CDAP be­gan with an ini­tial list of 20 phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal items tar­get­ing preva­lent chron­ic con­di­tions. Over the years, the pro­gramme has sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ed its of­fer­ings. As of 2025, CDAP pro­vides ac­cess to 47 es­sen­tial med­ica­tions, cov­er­ing a wide range of chron­ic dis­eases in­clud­ing di­a­betes, asth­ma, glau­co­ma, epilep­sy, thy­roid dis­ease, parkin­son’s dis­ease and men­tal de­pres­sion and high­clood pres­sure to name a few.