The Kuwait Ministry of Health has decided to to waive cancer medication fees for expatriates. Expatriates will no longer be required to pay for cancer diagnosis and treatment in all hospitals and medical centers, provided they are legal residents in the country.
Even before the decision, many foreign patients had been receiving free cancer treatments, some of them through financial assistance from the Patient Helping Fund and other charitable and non-governmental organizations operating in Kuwait. The new legislation means that the Ministry of Health will no longer charge expatriates for cancer diagnosis and treatment at any of Kuwait’s state hospitals or medical centers at all.
Kuwait has one of the lowest rates of cancer in the world with only 14 cancer patients among 100,000 people. The Ministry of Health claims to be able to cure about 50 percent of them.