KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

De­spite con­cerns raised by phar­ma­cy as­so­ci­a­tions over med­ica­tion short­ages un­der the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP), the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­tired Per­sons (TTARP) says it has not re­ceived com­plaints from its mem­bers about be­ing un­able to ac­cess their pre­scrip­tions.

TTARP first vice-pres­i­dent Reynold Coop­er told Guardian Me­dia the or­gan­i­sa­tion has not been made aware of any wide­spread is­sues af­fect­ing re­tirees who de­pend on the pro­gramme.

“I haven’t heard any­thing. We have not re­ceived any re­ports from our mem­bers about med­ica­tion short­ages or dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing their pre­scrip­tions through CDAP,” Coop­er said.

His com­ments came a day af­ter Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe ac­knowl­edged on­go­ing sup­ply chain and dis­tri­b­u­tion chal­lenges af­fect­ing the pro­gramme, while em­pha­sis­ing that pa­tients should still be able to ob­tain med­ica­tion else­where with­in the pub­lic health sys­tem.

Bo­doe said phar­ma­cists have been in­struct­ed to con­tact neigh­bour­ing health cen­tres and phar­ma­cies to lo­cate med­ica­tions when stocks are un­avail­able at their fa­cil­i­ties. He added that the Min­istry of Health is work­ing to ad­dress both dis­tri­b­u­tion and broad­er sup­ply chain is­sues.

Dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, PNM deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr San­jiv Bood­hu al­so raised con­cerns over re­ports of med­ica­tion short­ages.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress short­ages of drugs avail­able un­der CDAP.

The As­so­ci­a­tion of Phar­ma­cist Owned Phar­ma­cies has al­so com­plained that short­ages of sev­er­al com­mon­ly pre­scribed med­ica­tions, in­clud­ing ro­su­vas­tatin, losar­tan, am­lodip­ine and met­formin, have per­sist­ed since late last year, forc­ing some pa­tients to pur­chase med­ica­tion pri­vate­ly when CDAP stocks are un­avail­able.

Mean­while, the Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion agreed that while dis­tri­b­u­tion chal­lenges ex­ist, the larg­er is­sue has been the sup­ply of med­ica­tion from phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­trib­u­tors, a sit­u­a­tion it said has been ex­ac­er­bat­ed by de­layed Gov­ern­ment pay­ments.

The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that pay­ments have re­sumed in re­cent months and ex­pressed op­ti­mism that sup­plies will im­prove dur­ing the Au­gust dis­tri­b­u­tion cy­cle.

De­spite those con­cerns from phar­ma­cy providers, there ap­pears to be no wide­spread in­di­ca­tion that pa­tients are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing med­ica­tion.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with mem­bers of the pub­lic, who like­wise re­port­ed no prob­lems ob­tain­ing pre­scrip­tions through the CDAP pro­gramme.