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CEBU CITY – Senior citizens associations lauded the city government’s initiative to distribute maintenance medicines that is expected to benefit over 90,000 elderly persons in the city.

Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia has vowed that seniors who are already taking medicines for common but long-term medical conditions will receive their maintenance drugs starting January, 2025.

“That’s why next year, I promise you that we have put in the budget that next year, January, we will start giving daily maintenance medicine,” Garcia announced during a recent barangay event here.

Most elderly folk require maintenance medicines for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other ailments.

“You will not buy those medicines anymore,” said Garcia, stressing that the city government will shoulder the cost of the drugs.

The city mayor made this pledge before barangay folk in the coastal village of Tinago.

He studied the possibility of the city government allocating additional budget for seniors after he noticed that the cost of maintenance medicines usually comes up in discussions he had with barangay and senior association meetings.

Garcia announced that in the first week of December, senior citizens will also receive their monthly allowance from October to
December.