COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

7 MARCH 2012 SRI LANKA
Besides that there were independent outlets which also operated on a commission
basis. The main storage depot for SPC is in Ratmalana, and holds between 3 to 6
months supplies of most popular drugs.‖
23.02 The same BHC letter 443 added:
―SPC are able to procure all Western drugs. Sometimes there were difficulties obtaining
some narcotic items in India, and also Indian drugs were occasionally sub-standard, but
SPC also deal with European suppliers, and often obtained specific drugs from the UK,
France, Germany or Switzerland. For very specific individual cases, a search would be
conducted over the internet to locate the required items and the request to purchase
them would be assessed by the Ministry of Health. If the costs could not be met by the
government, an individual had the option to contribute towards them.
―Prescription and dispensing charges are cheaper in Sri Lanka than in the United
Kingdom. As of 1st January 2008, the Healthcare and Nutrition Ministry banned the
prescription of drugs by their trade names, instead insisting on the use of their generic
names. This applies to doctors in government service as well as in the private sector…
‗The State Pharmaceutical Corporation (SPC) markets drugs under the generic name
and is most of the time cheaper than the branded versions.‖
23.03 The WHO (World Health Organisation) Country Health System Profile Sri Lanka 444
(undated, website accessed on 1 June 2011) provides useful general information on the
health resources in Sri Lanka:
―A wide disparity in the regional distribution of health personnel is evident. The Colombo
district has a high concentration of most categories of health personnel except public
health staff. In 2001, 35 percent of the specialists were concentrated in the Colombo
district…The government health sector takes care of healthcare needs of the vast
majority of the population. The private sector in health had been small in terms of
service provisions and financing. It is only recently that the private sector has been
growing mostly in urban areas. The private sector contribution has been mainly in urban
areas…Adequate emphasis is given in the past in building physical infrastructure,
including facilities and equipment, as a means of developing national healthcare
system. This has lead to a countrywide, comprehensive network of health centres,
hospitals and other medical institutions.‖
23.04 The WHO Mini profile 2007 445 (accessed on 1 June 2011), Sri Lanka recorded that:
―The public sector provides health care for nearly 60% of the population and caters to
95% of inpatient care. The private sector provides mainly curative care, which is
estimated to be nearly 50% of outpatient care. This is largely concentrated in urban and
suburban areas...The public sector provides care under allopathy and ayurvedic
systems. But there are private practioners [sic] of Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy
443 British High Commission Colombo, letter to the UKBA COI Service, dated 25 October 2010
444 World Health Organisation (WHO),Country Health System Profile Sri Lanka, undated
http://www.searo.who.int/EN/Section313/Section1524_10878.htm date accessed 1 June 2011
445 World Health Organisation (WHO), Mini profile 2007, Sri Lanka, undated,
http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/Country_Health_System_Profile_9-Sri-Lanka.pdf date accessed 1
June 2011, p14
The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February 2012.
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section
to 2 March 2012.
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