PMRP carries campaign to Kandy

KANDY: The Peoples Movement for the Rights of Patients (PMRP) which is campaigning for a health service where the well-being of the patient is given priority will take its message to different districts.

As a first step the PMRP in association with the Satyodaya Centre for Social Research and Encounter will conduct a health education and empowerment seminar at the Satyodaya Centre in Kandy on March 20 from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.

The main speaker will be Professor Carlo Fonseka, former Dean of the Colombo University Medical Faculty.

He will speak on the need for a national health policy to structurally correct a situation where the government allocates less than two percent of the national budget for life or death in health services and where Sri Lanka has only about 20 doctors for every hundred thousand patients while in contrast rich Italy has 550 for every hundred thousand patients.

Dr. Joel Fernando Professor of family medicine and course organiser at the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine will speak on the sources of health care financing and the dangers involved in excessive privatization.

Consultant Nutritionist Dr. Damayanthi Perera the only Sri Lankan with a doctorate in nutrition will speak on how we are poisoning ourselves and making ourselves sick through a wrong diet including western junk foods.

The thrust of her talk will be the need for an evidenced based national food and nutrition policy.

How to get quality drugs at affordable prices will be the theme of a talk by Prasadini Perera, project officer of Health Action International Asia Pacific. After the seminar the PMRP hopes to form its first major branch in the Kandy district with the cooperation of Satyodaya.