With the annual dengue epidemic this year reaching its deadliest proportions, and other mysterious diseases like the viral flu or rat fever hitting hundreds of people, the government is taking urgent curative and preventive measures. Raids by health ministry officials on mosquito breeding sites are not enough. The people need to realise the immense danger involved and cooperate fully and willingly in tackling these diseases.
The Rajapaksa regime and the health ministry while effectively implementing the immediate remedial measures, also need to act on some vital, structural adjustments needed to restore a healthcare service where the well-being of the patients is given top priority both in the public and private sectors. The structural adjustments include implementation of a comprehensive National Health Policy whereby the prominence given to allopathy or Western medicine will be balanced by the inclusion of other forms of medical treatment like Ayruveda, Homeopathy, and Acupuncture at a national level.
Sri Lanka also needs a National Medicinal Drugs Policy (NMDP) based on the essential medicines concept of the revered Professor Senaka Bibile. This policy was formulated by Prof. Bibile more than 40 years ago and was accepted and acclaimed by the World Health Organisation. The theme for the WHO this year is the rational use of drugs and this essential medicines concept is being worked out effectively in more than hundred countries. Prof. Bibile’s essential medicines concept was accepted and implemented by the United Front Government of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1970. In terms of this, the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation was set up with Professor Bibile himself as chairman to import cost effective essential drugs mainly under their generic names. The State Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing Corporation was also set up to locally produce more than 50 varieties of quality drugs. Thereby Sri Lanka was able to save millions of dollars in foreign exchange annually by stopping the import of hundreds of non essential drugs under highly expensive brand names. Moreover because of the limited number being imported or produced locally, the government was able to maintain quality control of drugs and post marketing surveillance. The United States government itself reportedly intervened on behalf of some vested interests and in 1976 the Sri Lanka government was virtually forced to scrap the Senaka Bibile policy. A disheartened Professor Bibile quit and left for Guyana where he served the United Nations till he died mysteriously at a relatively early age. What happened after that was a calamity if not a catastrophe.
Even countries like Britain, which were in the forefront of the open market economy kept healthcare under state regulation and monitoring because they were aware that if health was put in the market the poor would die. The Jayewardene government and others that followed it left health in the market and today thousands of non essential though highly expensive drugs are being imported, prescribed and sold. No one is sure how many varieties of drugs have been registered while some pharmacologists put the figure as high as 9,000 which would be a dubious world record for Sri Lanka.
Whatever may have happened or not happened during the past three decades Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena has repeatedly assured he would introduce legislation for an NMDP next month. We hope that Minister Sirisena with the full backing of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and several other parties in the UPFA will introduce this legislation next month.
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