The Ministry of Health is set to study unifying medicine prices with neighboring countries, pointing out that a governmental meeting brought together ministry leaders with the Federation of Drug Importers. According to an Arab daily the Minister of Health, Dr. Ahmed Al-Awadi, is keen to complete this step, while taking into account all aspects, especially the auditors and patients, and providing them with safe medicine at reasonable prices.
Moreover, the ministry added a new set of medicines that are only dispensed to citizens, and released a circular to all pharmacists and doctors in health departments not to dispense 26 medicines to expatriates. The report mentioned that this came after a similar decision to limit the dispensing of 372 complementary medicines to Kuwaiti patients, with the intention of preventing waste and rationalizing spending with the availability of alternatives for non-Kuwaitis, and the decision to collect fees from expatriates for dispensing medicines that were free, at 5 dinars from the clinic and 10 dinars from the hospital.