The government has approved a new mechanism that will see Members of Parliament appointed as District Health Coordination Officers in every district, in a Cabinet-cleared reform aimed at tightening links between central government and provincial health services.
The proposal was presented by Minister of Health and Mass Media Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa, the ministry said on Sunday. The MPs will be tasked with identifying district-level health needs with public participation, prioritising those needs, and integrating them into national and provincial health plans. They will also facilitate coordination between health institutions, support implementation of ministry-led development initiatives, recommend priority projects to the ministry and monitor ongoing projects to ensure timely completion.
The Health Ministry said the reform addresses long-standing inefficiencies caused by the split between centrally run institutions — including teaching and base hospitals — and facilities managed by the nine provincial councils. That fragmentation, the ministry said, had resulted in poor coordination and limited reflection of grassroots health requirements in national planning.
The new framework is expected to give the ministry a politically accountable channel into each district at a time when the public health system is under strain from persistent staff shortages, pharmaceutical pricing pressure and a sequence of provincial outbreaks, including the Deniyaya viral meningitis cluster that prompted four schools to be shut for two days from Monday.
The ministry said the appointed coordinators will work with public participation to map district priorities and feed them upward into the planning cycle, framing the reform as an attempt to make health investment more responsive to community-level needs rather than driven only from Colombo.
Source: Ada Derana.
