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Health and Mass Media Minister Dr Nalinda Jayatissa

The expenditure head of the Ministry of Health and Mass Media was debated yesterday, where claims by opposition MPs regarding shortages of certain essential medicines were hotly disputed by the government.

Opening the debate for the opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Gampaha District MP Dr Kavinda Jayawardena said the country was facing a crisis owing to a shortage of essential medicines. While 862 medicines were currently listed as “essential medicines,” there were shortages in more than 300 of them, he claimed. The SJB MP said people were facing immense hardship owing to these shortages.

He called on the government to take steps to encourage local pharmaceutical suppliers by streamlining the registration process to enable registration within a shorter period of time. While the registration process has been reduced considerably from about 500 days to 200, it is still not enough to compete with others in the region. In India, the registration is 30 days while it is 90 days in Bangladesh, he noted. Dr Jayawardena called on the Health Ministry to take steps to reduce the registration process to at least 50 to 60 days to encourage local production.

While the country’s health sector had achieved significant victories, it is also facing significant challenges, said Deputy Minister of Health Dr Hansaka Wijemuni. “As a government, we are formulating programmes to achieve victories that have so far evaded us,” the deputy minister said. Among the challenges facing the health sector, Dr Wijemuni cited the country’s ageing population, changing disease patterns, including how even diseases that had thought to have been eradicated are resurfacing. He also pointed to the rise in non-communicable diseases, challenges posed to health due to changing weather and climate patterns and obstructions to the country’s medicine supply owing to circumstances beyond the government’s control.

SJB Gampaha District MP Dr Kavinda Jayawardena

“The biggest challenge is that health is a deeply sensitive subject and a deeply sensitive sector. In Sri Lanka, health is being used as a political tool,” Dr Wijemuni told the House. He urged politicians and health sector trade unions not to politicize the health sector.

Those who speak of a “76-year curse” are reluctant to acknowledge the great advances that have been achieved in the country’s health sector over the course of this time, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa said. He cited the progress made in reducing child and maternal mortality rates and increasing life expectancy over the past 76 years. “Though those who speak of the 76 year curse are reluctant to accept it, international organisations such as the United Nations, UNICEF, World Health Organisation and the World Population Fund have accepted this. That is enough for us.”

According to the annual press freedom index maintained by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Sri Lanka was ranked 139th out 189 countries in 2025, Chief Opposition Whip Gayantha Karunathilaka observed. He claimed some of the reasons for Sri Lanka’s low rank included the state media institutions being used as propaganda arms of the government, while many laws that apply to the media are being used to restrict their reporting. Mr Karunathilaka also criticized the Online Safety Act passed in 2024, which he noted elicited complaints that it imposed severe restrictions on freedoms surrounding internet and social media usage in the country. “Though your government promised to abolish this Act, you are not uttering a word on that now,” he pointed out.

While it is true that Sri Lanka was ranked in 139th place in the RSF index for 2025, the opposition should also be mindful that the country was ranked in 150th place in 2024, Deputy Minister Dr Kaushalya Ariyarathne observed, pointing out that the country’s press freedom ranking had improved under the NPP government. She noted that one of the main reasons cited by RSF for Sri Lanka’s low ranking was the impunity that exists regarding attacks on journalists. She claimed that no government that had come to power had any real interest in ending the culture of impunity surrounding attacks on journalists, adding that even the Yahapalana Government, which had won a massive people’s mandate to end this culture, failed to put an end to it despite having a golden opportunity to do so.

The challenge for the NPP government now is that much evidence related to the murders and disappearances of journalists had been destroyed over the ensuing decades. “However, we made a pledge to the people that we would reopen these case files and do as much as possible to take legal proceedings forward expeditiously. These investigations are proceeding. There are challenges, but we are moving forward despite them.”

Winding up the debate, Health and Mass Media Minister Dr Nalinda Jayatissa said he wished to remind the opposition that the Health Ministry under him had reduced prices of the largest number of medicines in the country’s history. “At no other time in history has a government reduced the prices of 350 medicines,” he said, criticizing the opposition for failing to appreciate the government’s action in this regard. Noting that the price reduction had been done in just one year of the NPP government coming to power, the minister said the government will take steps to reduce the prices of many other medicines as well in the future.

Dr Jayatissa also disputed the documents regarding shortages of essential medicines being cited by opposition MPs, saying they were not official documents and seemed to have been typed or downloaded from somewhere. He claimed he had instructed ministry officials to investigate the claims of shortages in the documents cited by opposition MPs and they had reported back that there was more than enough stocks in the Health Ministry’s Medical Supplies Division of some medicines that were said to be in short supply.