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Healthcare and Nutrition Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva addressing the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) at the United Nations has stressed that Sri Lanka had effectively and efficiently utilised domestic and international resources in the realisation of their population and reproductive health goals.

"We are indeed grateful to the donor community and in particular to the United Nations Population Fund for the assistance extended to Sri Lanka to implement its program effectively, Minister de Silva added.

"Population and development issues are very much inter-related," added the Minister emphasising that international developments that bring about "economic shocks" which causes adverse effects on developing countries in turn affect the implementation of population and reproductive health programs.

Therefore, I wish to emphasise that the international donor community should increase their contributions to enable developing countries to mitigate such external shocks which are beyond our control so that population and reproductive health programs including poverty alleviation could be effectively implemented.

Minister de Silva also said: Sri Lanka and the Government of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga is fully committed to the implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action. In this regard, I wish to take this opportunity to highlight some of our achievements in the post ICPD period, the challenges we face and the way forward in meeting both the ICPD and Millennium Development Goals. "During the past decade, Sri Lanka has continued to consolidate on the achievements in the population, development and reproductive health fields.

Sri Lanka's progress in the population and development field during the past decade has been significant. The rate of growth of population has declined from 1.5 percent in the early 1990s to 1.1 percent today. Life expectancy at birth for females and males is comparable to that of more developed countries with 75.4 and 70.7 years respectively.

Infant mortality rate has been reduced to 13 per thousand live births and the maternal mortality ratio is about 50 per 100,000 live births. Per capita income has continued to increase at a steady pace. Continued reliance on open economic policies with a human face and greater emphasis on human resource development, have enabled Sri Lanka to achieve and average economic growth rate of 5 per cent during the past decade, despite the armed conflict in the North and East of the country.

"I wish to draw your attention to another important issue that confronts us, namely international migration. There are about 1.5 million migrant workers mainly females working outside the country. Some of them are exposed to health risks. In addition, migration of female workers has adversely affected the lives of families left behind and the workers themselves have been affected by poor working conditions.

On the other hand, the "brain drain" resulting in large numbers of health and other professionals trained by the Government, emigrating, has placed detrimental pressures on our national healthcare system and other development activities."

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