Colombian government declares mandatory insurance coverage for medical cannabis products

From 1 January 2023, every insurance provider in Colombia must cover the costs of medical cannabis prescriptions for patients.

The Ministry of Health of Colombia reaffirmed the inclusion of plant-based medical cannabis products in the mandatory insurance coverage system. Resolution 2808 of 2022 was signed on 30 December 2022, removing the ambiguities about whether plant-based magistral preparations from medical cannabis were included. This has now been confirmed.

In this iteration, the government also validated for which medical conditions cannabis is an effective treatment, including chronic and neuropathic pain, oncology pain, sleep disorders, epilepsy and fibromyalgia.

Khiron, a global medical cannabis company, announced that more than 90 per cent of its cannabis sales in Colombia during the first six months of 2022 were for insurance-covered prescriptions. The company will immediately begin filling backlogged orders of insurance-covered prescriptions in the country.

It will achieve this through its wholly owned medical cannabis clinic network, Zerenia, that has entered a contract to provide ‘Integrative Health Services and Pharmacotherapeutic Treatment with Medical Cannabis’ with the largest government-owned insurance company in the capital city, Bogota. More than 1.2 million people have this insurance. This is the first time an insurance company in Latin America is contracting medical cannabis specific services and products.

Alvaro Torres, CEO of Khiron, said: “We welcome the decision from the new Colombian government to categorically mandate insurance coverage for our medical cannabis products. With this decision, Khiron will immediately tackle the backlog of covered medical cannabis products to our patients.”