Commonwealth Chief welcomes new President of Commonwealth Medical Association

The Secretary General of the Commonwealth Baroness Patricia Scotland QC met the newly-elected President of the Commonwealth Medical Association, Prof. Vajira H.W. Dissanayake at the Commonwealth Secretariat at Marlborough House in London recently.

She thanked Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Medical Association and the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka for hosting the highly successful 24th Triennial Conference of the Commonwealth Medical Association in Sri Lanka in October 2016 and pledged her support to take forward the Colombo Declaration that was adopted at the conference by the Commonwealth Health Professionals Alliance consisting of Commonwealth associations representing doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, dentists and other healthcare professionals. 

Baroness Scotland praised the Sri Lankan Government for supporting the initiative to set up a Commonwealth Institute for Digital Health in Colombo that was proposed by the Commonwealth Medical Association as a healthcare innovation initiative with the backing of two ministries – the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Science, Technology and Research. 

Wide-ranging discussions with Dr. Josephine Ojiambo, Deputy Secretary General of the Commonwealth and the former Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Kenya to the United Nations; Dr. Joanna Nurse, the Head of the Health and Education Unit of the Commonwealth Secretariat; Anoop Singh, the Acting Chairperson of the Commonwealth Institute for Infrastructure Development; and Prof. Sir Michael Marmot, Immediate Past President of the World Medical Association followed on how the proposed institute could be supported by the Commonwealth Secretariat and how it could serve as a training, research and innovation hub for the Commonwealth, bringing about transformative change across health systems in the Commonwealth.

The institute will be launched at the Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting on 21 May 2017 in Geneva by Minister of Health, Nutrition, and Indigenous Medicine Dr. Rajitha Senaratne and Minister of Science, Technology and Research Susil Premajayantha. This will be followed by the high-level launch of the institute in London during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in April 2018 by President Maithripala Sirisena.