Significant progress in Lanka's health, social status - Minister

Nadira GUNATILLEKE

Sri Lanka's Health and social status has shown a significant progress over the last several years. Sri Lanka's life expectancy is 72 years for males and 76 years for females while the maternal mortality rate is 44 per 100,000 live births and infant mortality rate is 11.2 per 1,000 live births, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Healthcare and Nutrition Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said.

He was addressing the `Nutrition and Millennium Goals' conference at the Colombia University, United States yesterday.

Minister de Silva invited by the Colombia University, U.S to address the conference, said as far as the nutritional indices are concerned, there has been a reduction in malnutrition during the past few decades.

"When comparing to other South Asian countries, Sri Lanka has shown a significant progress," he said.

The Minister pointed out that the current prevalence of underweight among children under five years has come down to 22 per cent and chronic malnutrition is 16 per cent. About 29 per cent of Sri Lankan children suffer from Vitamin A deficiency and a similar proportion are affected with iron deficiency. Overweight and obesity are emerging problems particularly among the school children in urban areas. The current prevalence of overweight is 10 per cent, he said.

According to the Minister, several projects and programmes implemented by the Government has helped the country achieve high health and social indicators.

Free health and free education are two of main reasons that stand behind Sri Lanka's achievements.

The Healthcare and Nutrition Ministry has developed a National Nutrition Policy and this will function as the base document on which strategies and action plans will be developed, he said.

Establishment and implementation of a National Nutrition Surveillance System is another strategy that has been adopted to improve the information base which will help targeting of interventions, the minister said.