Srilanka is hailed as the “Lighthouse” country in the SEARO region especially in terms of the maternal and child health having achieved the MDG goals even when they were being set. One of the reasons has been the progressive thinking of the healthcare planners and openness to change. It is not surprising therefore that they have been one of the early converters to the QI methodology. There is great impetus to the QI movement from the Family Health Bureau and WHO,Srilanka.

A team from Srilanka first attended the Regional Workshop for Improving Quality of Hospital Care for Maternal and Newborn Health, 6-8 FEB 2017, New Delhi, India, where the concepts were introduced. Following which the teams completed a QI project from the neonatology division in Anuradhapura on preventing readmissions due to Dehydration Fever.

In the second stage, the QI movement has been adopted in a big way where WHO organized a “Capacity Building Workshop for Point of Care Quality Improvement for mothers and newborns in Improving facility-based care around child-birth from 22-24 August in Colombo, S. In this program teams from 7 hospitals from all over the country were invited to understand the methodologies and plan a QI project. The workshop started with a facilitators training on day 1 where local professionals were trained who then facilitated teams on day 2 and 3 with the help from experts from AIIMS, New Delhi and WHO.

The purpose of the training to develop capacity at the national level for hands-on guidance along with the remote hand holding by the QI faculty.

Presently, the following 6 QI projects have been planned after the QI workshop which are at various stages of execution :