Malnutrition among pregnant women continues -Expert

South Asia's status on human development especially, child mortality and malnutrition is close to lower middle income averages but slightly better than Sub-Saharan Africa's. Significant progress has been made in basic education,

but female adult literacy is the worst among all World Bank regions.

This was highlighted at the South Asia high-level forum on 'Sexual and Reproductive Health beyond MDG Countdown' held recently in Negombo.

Sri Lanka by providing free health care services has performed high in equality. The free service system has taken away injustice. Sri Lanka is doing very well. Every maternal death is counted and investigated with a view to take preventive action, Consultant Community Physician Program Officer - (Maternal Care), Dr. D.K. Nilmini N. Hemachandra said.

The country's health service quality aspect needs to be improved as we have numerically achieved the MDG targets.

We are at present focusing more on other aspects such as waiting time to improve the service delivery quality, she said.

The remaining reproductive health challenge for Sri Lanka is nutrition. We need to improve on the nutrition state of the pre-pregnant women. There is a special medical examination in place to be conducted soon after marriage. The introduction of this examination is to prevent risk at birth and control illnesses by early detection, she said.

We need to create a demand for reproductive health services. Sri Lanka has adequate policy framework and we need to move forward by having access to service, adequate financing, continue care and guarantee of results.

Family planning is helping couples to have desired number of children and providing female education. Family planning is one of the key drivers in fertility decline. The access and coverage of family planning services need to expand supply and demand, use innovative approaches for coverage and increase family planning programs focus on the hard-to-reach areas.

It should improve synergies and coordination of service delivery between family planning and health services. It is important to conduct on-going stakeholder consultations to ensure contraceptive security and program sustainability.

Sri Lanka has effective health policies and every person has access to healthcare service. Therefore, disparities are not observed in the country, Dr. Hemachandra said.

The South Asia region is categorized by the World Bank into eight

countries namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The forum was organized by the World Bank with the collaboration of World Health Organization, UNFPA and UNICEF.

-SJ