Improving childhood cancer treatment, securing access to essential medicines and raising the quality of life of children with the disease were the central themes of the Second International Congress on Childhood Cancer, held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on 21 and 22 October. Sri Lanka was represented by Deputy Minister of Women and Child Affairs Dr. Namal Sudarshana.
The congress ran alongside the World Summit on Investing in Children’s Wellbeing, which drew more than 600 participants from over 100 countries, the Daily Mirror reported. The summit was held under the theme “Investing in Children’s Wellbeing: A Path to Sustainable and Equitable Development for Future Generations.”
Policymakers, representatives of international organisations including the United Nations, and specialists in children’s rights discussed strengthening children’s access to essential services, improving health and education outcomes, reducing child poverty and malnutrition, and preventing abuse and violence against children.
Participants gave particular attention to children with disabilities, children deprived of family care, and those in socially vulnerable circumstances.
The declaration
The summit’s principal outcome was the adoption of the Samarkand Declaration on Investing in Children’s Wellbeing, which stresses translating international commitments on children’s rights into concrete action at national level.
Its governing argument was that money spent on children’s health, education and protection should be treated as an investment in human development rather than as expenditure — a framing aimed at finance ministries as much as health ministries.
Sri Lanka’s participation, the report said, offered a chance to exchange international experience and best practice and to strengthen cooperation on child protection and development. It follows Sudarshana’s representation of Sri Lanka at a regional children’s gathering in Seoul earlier this year.
Why access to medicines is the live question here
The congress theme that lands hardest in Sri Lanka is access to essential medicines, because the country’s recent childhood cancer reporting has turned on exactly that.
Up to 1,000 children and young people aged 0 to 19 are diagnosed with cancer in Sri Lanka each year, this desk reported in September, with leukaemia among the most common forms. In the same month, doctors questioned how 190,000 cancer injections cleared Customs without regulatory sign-off, and more than 1,000 cancer patients were reported waiting for radiotherapy because a treatment-planning scanner had been out of service since April.
A declaration adopted in Samarkand does not fix a scanner in Colombo. The gap between international commitment and national delivery is the problem the declaration itself names.
A single-outlet report
The Daily Mirror is the only verified newsroom to have carried this report at the time of writing. The event itself is independently listed on the World Health Organization’s European region events calendar under the same title and the same 21 October date; that listing carries no extractable publication date, so it is described here rather than cited as a source.
No filing reports what Sri Lanka committed to at the summit, whether the declaration carries any funding mechanism, or the size and composition of the Sri Lankan delegation.