The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has granted approval for a $106.9m financing package for Sri Lanka’s healthcare programme.

This package aims to improve the country’s secondary curative care services, enhance the prevention and control of communicable diseases, and strengthen governance and management capabilities throughout the health sector.

The Strengthening Integrated Health Care and Governance for Universal Health Coverage Program includes a $100m ADB loan and a $6.9m Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response Trust Fund grant.

ADB Sri Lanka country director Takafumi Kadono said: “Sri Lanka has made impressive gains in ensuring access to and quality of health services for all. But with rising longevity and changing lifestyles, elderly health care needs and noncommunicable diseases are on the rise.

“Such demographic and disease pattern changes require a more robust secondary care to effectively provide patient-centred treatments and care services with enhanced case management capacity.” 

The results-based lending programme aims to improve the capacity and quality of secondary care across the nation.

It will achieve this by supporting the development of hospitals focused on outcomes and by expanding patient-centred specialist services in secondary facilities.

This initiative will establish secondary healthcare as the primary referral point in patient pathways, encouraging the sharing of resources with primary care facilities and other non-health government services.

In addition, the programme will include upgrades to service processes and infrastructure at hospitals to ensure climate resilience, quality, gender responsiveness, and accommodation for the elderly.

It will also involve the establishment of a centre for disease control, improving the capacity and accreditation of public health laboratories, and helping to adopt cross-sector integrated disease surveillance.

The programme will support government procurement system digitisation, pharmaceutical logistics, and quality assurance.

The benefits will extend to the entire population, as improved systems empower healthy individuals to engage in educational and economic opportunities.