COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

SRI LANKA 7 MARCH 2012
Country of Origin Information Service
UK Border Agency
25 October 2010
Dear colleague,
Re: Availability of drugs in Sri Lanka
The British High Commission in Colombo routinely monitors healthcare and the availability of
drugs in Sri Lanka. This letter updates previous communications submitted by this mission.
The mission statement of the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health is ―To contribute to social and
economic development of Sri Lanka by achieving the highest attainable health status
through promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative services of high quality made
available and accessible to the people of Sri Lanka‖ www.health.gov.lk. The government of Sri
Lanka promotes the fact that they provide free healthcare to all citizens through their national
health service. A substantial budget is allocated for the purchase of drugs, enabling the
population to purchase them at reasonable rates.
We recently spoke to the General Manager of the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation of Sri
Lanka (SPC). He told us that the SPC came under the Ministry of Health, but was an
independent body with 784 employees. The administrative centre of the corporation was based
in central Colombo, and co-ordinated 24-hour cover through pharmaceutical retail outlets
nationwide. He explained that they had 52 distributors who were private companies working on
a commission basis, and 74 different franchises. They also had a tie-up with the Cargill‘s
supermarket chain, with each store having a pharmaceutical counter manned by their own staff,
which was part of the SPC distribution network. 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.
The main objective of the SPC is to procure for the Ministry of Health all pharmaceuticals,
surgical consumables, and laboratory chemicals and equipment through their Medical Supplies
Division. We were told that all institutions administered by the Ministry of Health place orders
with the SPC. The SPC then carry out a worldwide search as part of their standard procurement
procedures, and arrange for the purchase and importation of the ordered drugs and equipment.
We were told that 85% of their purchases were currently from India because not only were the
goods much cheaper, but the freight charges were also much less. The General Manager
added that SPC also supplied the private sector as well, accounting for 70% of the national
290 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.