Right to Health of Internally Displaced Persons - IDP SriLanka

It was found that many heath institutions were destroyed either by
Tsunami or due to the conflict, and still not rehabilitated properly.
According to the General Circular No: 02-61/2005 of Ministry of Health
on Re-categorization of Hospitals, five categories of hospitals were
introduced namely, Teaching Hospitals/Provincial Hospitals, District
General /District Base Hospitals (all existing General and Base
Hospitals), Divisional Hospitals ( all District Hospitals, Rural hospitals,
Peripheral Units), Primary Medical Care Units( Central Dispensaries &
Maternity Homes) and Special Hospitals to enable the development of
these hospitals in a uniform manner in order to provide equitable service
to all districts and provinces. This circular recommends certain
minimum facilities to be available in particular institutions. But it was
observed that those recommendations are not been carried out and many
hospitals are far beyond even than the minimum requirements.
Regarding insufficiency of human resources in health sector in those
areas, it was revealed that retention of health staff is the most difficult
task for health administrators. According to the Secretary to the
provincial Ministry of Health, Eastern Province, the main problem in the
Eastern province is the retaining doctors and other staff within the
province out of 23 doctors appointed only 12 reported to work and 32
doctors have taken transfers to other districts.
Having familiarize with the rights perspective of health and the above
curative health issues in the selected districts it is inevitable to suggest
that there is something lack in the system to address those raised health
issues. It is obvious that the government is fighting with scars of
resources and cost for social welfare but there is a particular sum
allocated to health in every year. Such funds needs to be distributed
according to the needs of the people and that needs are to be calculated on
various factors. Population, availability of health facilities and
institutions and health indicators of each district are among the deciding
factors when taking a decision by the authorities. But, the most
depressing story here is the unavailability or reliability of such health
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By the General Circular Letter No:02-59/2008, the Ministry has given directions to
subdivide the category of Divisional Hospitals according to the bed capacity namely, if it
is more than 100 patient beds-Type A DH, between 50 to 100 beds-Type B DH, less than
50 beds-Type C DH
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