Minister laments poaching of medicos

Ridma Dissanayake

"Rich countries are attempting to attract our best medical graduates by offering them very high salaries to work in their countries.

"As a politician, I say, this cannot be justified by the rich countries, because we spend people's money to produce these medical graduates under the free education system in Sri Lanka," Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena said.

The minister was addressing the '44th Asia Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health' at the BMICH. The minister further said Sri Lanka had already realized most of the health related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), even before the 2015 target date, mainly due to the assistance given by the government, the Health Ministry and the commitment of health care providers.

"Our life expectancy rate has gone up to 76 years for females and 74 years for males during the last decade. This is due to our free Health system and free education system," he said. Our maternal mortality rate and child mortality rate is the lowest in the South Asian countries. We were able to eradicate several communicable diseases many years ago, such as, Small Pox, Diphtheria, Polio. Now we have to access to eradicate stage several communicable diseases such as Malaria, Tuberculosis and rabies." "Health systems cannot deliver quality health services, in the absence of sufficient numbers of trained, motivated and well rewarded health care staff. "We deliver healthcare services completely free of charge, in all State Hospitals, to all the people". He said it was not only free health, free education. Education is free of charge from primary level up to the University level.

"As a result, Sri Lanka has a high literacy rate, the highest in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Sri Lanka did not find any difficulties to enroll students for medical studies. The Health Ministry plays a key role nationally, when it comes to issues like cancer, diabetes and food safety.

"The inequalities in health outcomes are very noticeable in this part of the world. There is a feeling among the people that health is influenced by society, and the politics governing it. "The social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities - the unfair and avoidable differences in health status are observed within and between countries." he said.