In Sri Lanka, eventually we hope to ensure that every citizen has a family doctor to look after his or her health, Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne said.
Addressing the 144th Executive Board Meeting of the WHO now being held in Geneva, Switzerland he said that Sri Lanka's free health care delivery package is increasingly geared towards minimizing out of pocket expenditure to the patients. Towards this end we are in the process of promoting private-public partnerships, presently in pharma production, soon to be extended to health care service delivery as well.
According to Minister Senaratne, Sri Lanka has resorted to Implementing specific field tested strategies including the PEN package (package of essential non-communicable disease interventions) to mitigate the situation, and have shown some degree of success.
Minister Senaratne pointed out that globally the countries have achieved a lot in health care delivery over the last few decades in the process of eliminating wide ranging communicable diseases. However, the countries are yet to mitigate the growing challenge posed by much talked about noncommunicable diseases – a major challenge for the whole world, with no country being spared.