Sri Lanka
Population: 21,803,000
Income per Capita: 13, 260 PPP dollars
Percentage of GDP on Healthcare: 3.9 (2019)
Practice
Number of family doctors – unknown
Physician to population ratio – 100.4 physicians per 100,000 people
DALY: 14,898/100,000 individuals (due to all causes)
Life Expectancy:
Females 2017: 80.1 years
Males 2017: 73.4 years
Mortality rate 2017:
Males: 151.16 per 1,000 male adults
Females: 56.07 per 1,000 female adults
Infant Immunization-HepB3: % of 1-year-old children received: 99%.
College of Family Physicians (Y or N):
Yes
The College of General Practitioners of Sri Lanka (CGPSL)
Training
Type of Training – Residency, and diploma
Length of Training – 5 Year residency training
Year Family Medicine training established – 1979
Number of family medicine residents graduating each year –
If it is DFM doctors its about 50 per year
If its MD fam med “specialists in Fam Med” it is from 5 – 17 per year
CGPSL MCGP about 20 per year
Number of institutions that offer family medicine – 8
Name of institutions that offer family medicine – (University of Colombo, University of Peradeniya, University of Jaffna, University of Kelaniya, Wayamaba University, University of Sri Jayawardenepura, Sabaragamuwa University, Eastern University)
Healthcare system
Sri Lanka utilizes a public healthcare system but one that is also reliant on private healthcare due to the long waiting times. Family physicians continue to practice in Sri Lanka and have been doing so for several years with minor recognition. No vocational training was given to General practitioners in the earlier years. The experience gained was due to a few years of work in the government health service which has hospital-based curative and community-based preventative health services. Therefore, the doctors who embarked on general practice had to adapt themselves to the individual/family/community-oriented practice on their own. The establishment of the CGPSL with the aim of development of standards and the active promotion of postgraduate and continuing medical education of general practitioners and teaching undergraduates may have initiated a new recognition and acceptance of Family Medicine as an academic discipline in its own right in the country leading to the development of formal training programs within the PGIM later on. Currently with the shift of the morbidity pattern in Sri Lanka from infectious diseases to more non communicable disease related morbidity the government has highlighted the importance of developing primary care within the country and have stated that a general practitioner centered health system should be established. (2) Most of the practices are solo practices. The GPs provide curative and preventive care and the set-up is very similar to GP clinics worldwide.