Health Ministry to Sell Medicine Directly to Expats

The Ministry of Health will present a new report to Health Minister Dr Ahmad Al-Awadhi, which includes a plan to sell medicine directly to expatriates at hospitals and clinics, instead of obligating them to pay the fixed fee of KD 5 for their medication.

The report found that medicine consumption is still large in the Minsitry's health centres and hospitals. The report also shows that expats acquire more medication, compared to the locals in the country. Furthermore, there was an emphasis in the report that monitoring medicine waste requires tighter control at both medical stores and government pharmacies. 

According to the report, there have been many cases where expats have been given twice as much medicine, which is always more than they need and medical stores do this to manipulate medication fees.

In addition to these cases, the report also refers to various cases where expats' treatment utilizes many medical devices including X-ray, however, they do not pay the fees for the treatment or they only pay once. 

The ministry is planning to implement stricter control in order to inhibit such manipulation and whoever violates the new regulations, will be penalized.