The Ministry of Health made available a draft resolution which contains a list of 44 services, technologies, and medications which will be excluded from the country’s publicly-funded health care benefit plans as of January 1st. The document will be open for observations and comments until December 7th.

According to the Ministry of Health, the exclusion of the 44 services, technologies, and medications from the Benefit Plan is based on the fact that they are of a cosmetic or esthetic nature or are not supported by scientific evidence, are experimental, or are not approved by the regulatory entity.

The Minister of Health, Alejandro Gaviria, explained that this process has been guided by these technical criteria rather than economic ones. “The published technologies meet two conditions. The first is that they are the fruit of a scientific consensus that has been assessed by our team, including the Institute for the Evaluation of Health Technologies (Instituto de Evaluación de Tecnologías en Salud or Iets), and the second is that at least 50 percent of the patients seen agreed that these should be excluded,” affirmed Gaviria.

The excluded medications include Anankira for rheumatoid arthritis; chondroitin (a medication which supposedly regenerates cartilage) and chondroitin sulfate to manage primary generalized osteoarthritis and polyarthritis; diacerein for joint problems; diazepam for managing convulsions caused by eclampsia; glucosamine and glucosamine hydrochloride for joint problems; and theophylline for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder.