Dr Kim Sung Chol, Regional Advisor for traditional medicine, World Health Organization (WHO) South-East Asia visited National Science Foundation on 11.02.2020 with a view to promoting traditional medicine in Sri Lanka. He underlined the need to strengthen research methodology and formulate guidelines and a mechanism to monitor system performance. He also said that it would be useful to learn about the good practices and prepare a comprehensive status report on traditional medicine in Sri Lanka.
Prof. Ranjith Senaratne, NSF Chairman, welcomed Dr. Kim and held a fruitful discussion with the delegates. He said that traditional medicine is receiving increasing recognition and attention in the country in keeping with national policy and expressed interest to work with Dr. Kim and WHO to strengthen traditional medicine. He further said that each country may have its own unique strengths and salient features and it would be useful if WHO could facilitate development of a network of countries actively engaged in traditional medicine so that such strengths could be shared among the countries for the benefit of humanity.
Meeting was facilitated by Dr. Palitha Abeykoon, Specialist Consultant for RPHS/NSF and a Senior Advisor to the WHO. He suggested that a policy dialog on traditional medicine be initiated. Dr. Nalinda Wellappuli, WHO, Mr. Wasantha Anuruddha, Head, STPRD/NSF, Dr. Gowry Moorthy, Head, RD/NSF, Ms. Dilani Jayaweera, Head, TSPU/NSF and Mr. Diyanath Ranasinghe, Research Scientist/RPHS also attended the meeting.
