Colombo – Sri Lanka's Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition (MOH) this week met with representatives from IOM, the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Central Bank and relevant ministries to initiate the development of a migration health policy for Sri Lanka.

The meeting, which was funded by IOM's 1035 grant facility for IOM Member States, discussed a migration health policy to address outbound, inbound and internal migrant flows.

Outward flows include some 1.8 million Sri Lankans who are employed abroad and play a critical role in the economy, sending home over USD 3 billion a year in remittances. Other flows linked to the end of the country's long running conflict in 2009 include displaced people returning to their places of origin, returning refugees from abroad and an expected rapid expansion of tourism.

"Sri Lanka needs to formulate a migration health policy that will make its migrants smarter, healthier and better protected. While migration in itself is not a risk factor to health, the circumstances surrounding the migration process increase vulnerability and expose migrants to various health risks," says IOM Sri Lanka Chief of Mission Mohammed Abdiker.

The meeting was attended by Hon. Nimal Siripala de Silva, Sri Lanka's Minister of Irrigation and Water Resource Development and the outgoing Minister of Health, who is the current president of the World Health Assembly – the governing body of the WHO.

He was a key player in the adoption of the 61st World Health Assembly Resolution on Health of Migrants, which calls on WHO Member States to "promote migrant-inclusive health policies and to train health professionals to deal with health-related issues associated with population movements, among others."

Speaking to participants, he said that many of his constituents migrated from their villages to the Middle East and he had seen first-hand the difficulties and negative impacts that they faced with regard to their health.

"Our migrant health policy must to be respected by migrant-receiving countries in order to be effective. It needs to offer strong guidelines for policies which can be adopted by other countries," he said.

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For more information please contact: Stacey Winston, IOM Sri Lanka, E-mail: swinston@iom.int or Gaya Nagahawatta, E-mail: gnagahawatta@iom.int