Patients of kidney, heart, blood pressure to get medicines for free in Nepal

KATHMANDU: The government is providing free medicines to the patients of renal, cardiac, blood pressure and mental diseases.

A source at the Ministry of Health and Population said that the decision would be implemented in the offing if the Finance Ministry agrees to allocate required amount of budget.

A high-level source in the Ministry of Health said that internal preparations have been concluded for distributing the medicines from the new fiscal year.

“Preparations have been made for distributing medicines for incommunicable diseases in view of the increase in these diseases day-by-day,” Prof Dr Ananda Kumar Shrestha, Chief of the Primary Health Service Recovery Directorate.

According to a study conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), incommunicable diseases than communicable ones have killed many people in Nepal.

Forty-eight per cent of the total deaths due to disease are caused by communicable diseases and the non-communicable diseases are responsible for the remaining percentage, WHO stated in a report.

Twenty to 25 different types of medicines for non-communicable diseases would be distributed to the patients free of cost. Currently, the Ministry has been providing 40 different types of medicines free of cost in hospitals with maximum of 25 beds and 35 different types of medicines free of cost at the Primary Health Centres.

The Ministry started providing free health services and medicines since 2010 as per its policy of making the basic health services accessible to the people. The government spends around 1.5 billion rupees annually for this purpose.