Right to Health of Internally Displaced Persons - IDP SriLanka

problems of conflict affected IDPs. But such kind of view is not legally
valid since, no official notice/letter/circular is saying that those circular
is equally applicable to the health concerns of conflict affected IDPs. If
they are equally applicable, there is no point of issuing “Provisional
guidelines for emergency management of public health problems of the
IDPs” by the Epidemiologist for the Batticaloa and Trincomalee in 2005.
Therefore it shows inequitable responses by health authorities for the
consequences of two disasters.
According to the National Health Policy, services and programmes will
be introduced by the Ministry to meet the emerging health needs, inter
alia the health problems of displaced populations. Though they have
established “Disaster Preparedness and Responses Unit” in the Ministry
in line with that policy, any other services and programmes, specially
addressing the health problems of conflict affected displaced population
are not discernible yet.
7.9. Security problems
Inability to access to some areas due to security problems is another
burning issue for the government health staff, NGOs and also to the
patients. It was reported from RDHS-Mannar that closure of the
Uyilankulam checkpoint is increasing travel costs for the majority of
health workers as 90% of staff working in Manthai West, now must travel
from Mannar Island through the A9 road. However this is only one of
such reported incidents where security problems is a factor in deciding
health conditions and people are also hesitated to travel from villages to
the town though more facilities and services are available, because the
value of life is bigger than suffering from an illness.
It is sometime evident that even though the funds and donations are there
to facilitate the health requirements of the displaced people, the burdens
such as security problems and lack of cooperation between the parties,
undermine this process. In Wahalkada Central Dispensary, earlier it was
reported that the doctor is providing services only 2 days for a week, but
after NPDS for IDPs Project's intervention residential doctor was
arranged to work for all the weekdays. Though MOH office is
conducting mobile medical clinics in threaten areas with the help of
NGOs like World Vision & Sarvodaya it was reported as not sufficient.
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