Sri Lanka enjoys impressive health indicators with a life expectancy for males and females standing at 72 years and 80 years respectively, Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne said.
As per WHO Global Report 2016, the incidence of tuberculosis in Sri Lanka is estimated at 65 per 100,000 population while prevalence and mortality stood at 99 and 5.6 per 100,000 population, the Minister said.
The Pulmonary TB notifications, which showed an increase till 2011, has remained steady since then at little over 10,000 detections annually. Of all the cases reported, nearly 45 percent cases were from the Western Province, Minister Rajitha said.
The Minister was addressing the Ministerial Meeting Towards Ending TB in the South-East Asian Region in New Delhi, India recently.
The Minister said according to WHO statistics, deaths due to chronic pulmonary airways diseases reached 6,127 or 4.84 percent of all deaths in 2014, while the age adjusted Death Rate stood at 29.4 per 100,000 of population, ranking at 38 in the global index.
This is in spite of the fact that Sri Lanka is ranked 11th out of 34 Asian countries surveyed by the 2015 mid-year `Numbeo Pollution Index’, which estimates overall pollution, with the biggest weight given to air pollution.
Nearly 70 percent of the hospital deaths in Sri Lanka are due to major non communicable diseases such as cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases.
The probability of dying prematurely from NCDs is 18 percent. Government target is to reduce this by two percent annually, the Minister said.
