The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) wants the contribution made by doctors and the State health sector to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to be properly recognised, saying that this contribution is not currently being adequately calculated.

Speaking to The Daily Morning yesterday (9), GMOA Secretary Dr Bandara Warakagoda said that the Association needed to convince the Government, political authorities and relevant officials of the contribution made by the medical profession to the country’s GDP.

“This contribution is not counted anywhere,” Dr Warakagoda said.

He said that the value of the services provided by doctors in State hospitals could be understood by comparing them with the cost of obtaining the same services from the private sector.

“For example, if we look at the cost of surgeries carried out in hospitals and calculate what people would have to pay for the same services in the private sector, even if we calculate only half of that amount, it would come to billions of Rupees a year for just one ward in one hospital,” he said.

Dr Warakagoda said that a proper calculation of the contribution made by the health sector to the GDP was therefore not being carried out. He said that the figures presented in official documents mainly treated the health sector as an expenditure, rather than recognising the value of the services provided to the public.

“We have to make the public, the Government, the political authorities and the relevant officials understand this,” he said.

Dr Warakagoda said that health and education are among the sectors in which Sri Lanka had achieved some of its strongest indicators, largely because the country had good human resources capable of producing a high level of output despite receiving relatively low salaries.