WHO has recognised Sri Lanka for keeping malaria away and protecting mothers and newborns from tetanus for ten straight years. In a country accustomed to hearing about institutional failure, this is a reminder of what sustained public policy can achieve.
Sri Lanka has received formal recognition from the World Health Organization for maintaining two major public-health achievements for a full decade: its malaria-free status and the elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus presented the citation to Health and Mass Media Minister Dr Nalinda Jayatissa during the 79th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia in Dili, Timor-Leste.
Sri Lanka was formally certified malaria-free by WHO in 2016, four years after the country’s last indigenous malaria cases were reported in 2012. It has now maintained that status for ten years despite imported cases and the continued presence of mosquitoes capable of transmitting the disease.
The country has also maintained the elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus for a decade, supported by high vaccination coverage, safe-delivery practices and a primary healthcare network that, despite all its shortcomings, continues to deliver extraordinary outcomes relative to Sri Lanka’s income level.
This is not a glamorous success story.
There are no megaprojects, ceremonial openings or ribbon-cuttings behind it.
There are instead public-health nurses, midwives, doctors, laboratory workers, epidemiologists, vaccination programmes, surveillance systems and decades of institutional memory.
That may be precisely why the achievement matters.
Sri Lanka came desperately close to eliminating malaria in the 1960s, only for the disease to return with devastating consequences. WHO therefore warns that elimination cannot be treated as a permanent victory: surveillance must continue because malaria remains endemic in nearby countries and imported infection could re-establish local transmission.
That history contains a lesson considerably wider than healthcare.
Institutions work when expertise is respected, systems survive changes of government and programmes are allowed to continue long enough to produce results.
Sri Lanka spends a great deal of time discussing what is wrong with the country.
Today it is worth acknowledging something that went remarkably right.
