On the road to UHC: The role of WHO, SLMA and Health Ministry

The WHO in its January Newsletter of the Joint Working Committee on UHC highlighted ‘Stories from the Field – Primary Health Care in Sri Lanka: On the road to UHC’ focusing on the contribution of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) towards this cause.

“Health is a human right because people don’t seek healthcare when they want it; they seek it because they need it. It’s a need and it’s our job as healthcare providers to provide them quality care,” the then SLMA President Dr. Ruvaiz Haniffa has said.

The SLMA which represents all state and private medical practitioners has been working with the Health Ministry and the WHO to bring about much-needed change in the Sri Lankan health system to focus on Primary Health Care (PHC) to achieve UHC.

The Health Ministry has identified WHO as the technical lead adviser in the PHC reorganization and WHO has rallied support by engaging various stakeholders across sectors. A key player is the SLMA and starting in 2018, it has partnered with the WHO to take forward the UHC agenda by organizing a series of activities from policy advocacy to raising awareness of health providers in the field.

"The SLMA, the Health Ministry and the WHO share the same vision of a need to shift from disease-oriented care to people-centred care. Change cannot happen overnight. We first wanted people to understand why we need to change and we needed to engage policymakers -- the people with the power to decide on change,” Dr. Haniffa has stated, explaining that the WHO supported the SLMA to host a parliamentary session with over 65 parliamentarians to sensitize them to the concept of UHC. The highlight of this event was the signing of the UHC pledge by parliamentarians, representing all political parties in the country.

“The WHO has expanded our horizon by providing us a global platform to learn from others and build on what we have. They are a resource we simply can’t do without," he has added.