For Healthy Life, Healthy Finance’

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Ministry of Health this week jointly organised a seminar titled “Cost Analysis and Health Finance” to share the findings on a study on Prevention of Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) among healthcare stakeholders.

JICA has been extending its technical assistance towards the Ministry of Health in implementing the “NCD Prevention Project” commonly known as NPP since May 2008.

NPP has been attempting to introduce effective population-wide prevention, early detection, screening and awareness-raising programmes in order to reduce the healthcare burden by preventing them at an early stage. Approaches such as a basic check up system at primary and secondary level healthcare institutions, follow up system for the high risk population, and health promotion activities in the pilot project areas of Kurunegala and Polonnaruwa Districts are some of the activities that have been implemented by the NPP.

NPP team and the counterpart ministry have been able to collect a massive amount of data during the health screening programmes that have been already conducted in the pilot areas. In depth analysis of this collected data has been done by the NPP team, and the outcome of the findings have been complied into one report. The report gives an analysis of the direct and indirect cost of pertaining to NCDs which could be utilised in evidence based decision-making.

The key speakers of the seminar were Takao Sugimoto from St. Mary’s Hospital, Japan who is an expert in Hospital Management and Cost Accounting, and Dr. Anuradhani Kasturiratne from the University of Kelaniya.

A panel discussion took place under the chairmanship of Dr. Wimal Jayantha, Deputy Director General/ Planning of MoH. The other panel discussants were, Professor Amala De Silva from the University of Colombo, Professor Yasuo Uchida from the Doshisha University of Japan, Dr. Thalatha Liyanage, Director NCD. The subject for the discussion was “cost and benefit of NCD prevention, aging society and sustainable health financing for Sri Lanka”.Akira Shimura, the Chief Representative of JICA Sri Lanka stated that “I believe this study would be a watershed event in the history of NCDs in Sri Lanka and would become an eye opener to the policy makers and that this would contribute to further discussions on health financing in Sri Lanka.”