Health minister wants CDAP reviewed to make it more effective

Health Minister Therese Baptiste-Cornelis is seeking a consultant to review her ministry's Chronic Disease Assistance Programme (CDAP), which provides free medication to persons with heart disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions.

She told reporters attending her staff Christmas party that the ministry has placed ads for tenders for consultants to “look at the CDAP programme.” 

She expressed concerns about whether the program should be expanded. She said while the ministry is continuing to order the relevant drugs the medication is "not getting out".

Baptiste-Cornelis is questioning the rules developed by the previous committee for CDAP which include scheduled days of the week for pharmacies to place orders. 

“The scheduled week says you must place it on a Wednesday at 8.30 am however, if you miss that schedule your order automatically goes into the next month. Therefore, for administrative error patients would suffer.”

Baptiste-Cornelis added, “The consultants will help guide us better on that because I said you can’t wait a whole month for that."