Access To Healthcare

Minister for Health and Population Pradip Poudel has said that hospitals can no longer cite a lack of medicines as an excuse for failing to provide services under the health insurance scheme. This step aims to ensure that patients have access to affordable medicines. Requiring every hospital to stock the government-allocated medicines to be used to improve the efficiency of the health in-surance programme is a commendable initiative. The ministry has been providing 98 types of medicines for both communicable and non-communicable diseases free of cost from district hos-pitals and primary health care centres. As per the policy, hospitals providing services under the health insurance scheme should mandatorily keep all the medicines as instructed by the Health Insurance Board.