Image credit- hoeven.senate.org
Sri Lanka plans to strengthen primary healthcare services to relieve the congestion at hospitals providing treatments at tertiary level as the general public prefer to receive treatment from the tertiary level hospitals.
Minister of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine Dr. Rajitha Senaratne has made a proposal to establish an advanced Health Service System, to enable the general public to have access to those facilities easily by linking the closest hospitals providing specialized treatment services, as forums.
The proposal focuses on providing the Medical Practitioners with the initial training required for carrying out the functions in the field of Family Medicine and for strengthening the first contact care services; ensuring that all patients are provided with treatments at the Primary Healthcare Institutions and to encourage to refer those patients to secondary and tertiary hospitals with Specialist Doctors appropriately, in a timely manner; and identifying one family doctor each to cover per 5,000 of the population and to further strengthen the institutions providing Primary Healthcare services to facilitate the prevention of illnesses.
