Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says a phar­ma­cy ded­i­cat­ed to the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme will be opened at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

The phar­ma­cy will not on­ly serve as a dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre for CDAP pre­scrip­tions but al­so a re­search cen­tre for pa­tient be­hav­iour, Deyals­ingh con­firmed on Tues­day.

"The CDAP phar­ma­cy at Cou­va has al­ready been man­dat­ed by a meet­ing we had at Cou­va last week. That, to­geth­er with the school of phar­ma­cy, they are to en­gage with se­ri­ous re­search and coun­selling of pa­tients with NCDs to dis­cov­er peo­ple's at­ti­tudes to­wards NCDs and es­pe­cial­ly their at­ti­tudes to­wards tak­ing med­ica­tion," said Deyals­ingh, who ex­plained this was done amid nu­mer­ous com­plaints from doc­tors that many peo­ple were guilty of not tak­ing their med­ica­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases such as di­a­betes, prop­er­ly.

"I know doc­tors who run the di­a­betes clin­ics who are ab­solute­ly frus­trat­ed every day when their pa­tients come to them. And the first ques­tion they ask, 'Are you tak­ing your med­ica­tion?' And the an­swer is no. I for­get I want to go and drink this week­end. Yes, those are the rea­sons you get, or I take a bush tea so I don't want to take my di­a­betes med­i­cine."

He added, "These are the pa­tients we have to do our re­search on to find out their at­ti­tudes to­wards be­ing com­pli­ant with their doc­tor's in­struc­tions."

This has caused com­pli­ca­tions for the pa­tients and by ex­ten­sion the med­ical in­sti­tu­tions across the coun­try, the min­is­ter said.

"You will be amazed at how many pa­tients present at the A&Es at our pub­lic hos­pi­tals be­cause of non-com­pli­ance with med­ica­tion. That is they don't take their med­ica­tion when pre­scribed, how pre­scribed, for the du­ra­tion pre­scribed and their NCDs like di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion, es­pe­cial­ly those two go to­tal­ly out of con­trol," Deyals­ingh said.

The Cou­va Hos­pi­tal is set to open in Sep­tem­ber, where it is ex­pect­ed to be used as part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Med­ical Fac­ul­ty. Deyals­ingh said the phar­ma­cy will work in con­junc­tion with the med­ical school to con­duct re­search on pa­tient be­hav­iour. He said the phar­ma­cy will al­so seek to give CDAP users prop­er guid­ance con­cern­ing their pre­scrip­tions.

"How many CDAP pa­tients, es­pe­cial­ly the el­der­ly, get prop­er coun­selling in the phar­ma­cies when they go to fill their CDAP pre­scrip­tions? They get very lit­tle," he said.