10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayathissa

Jathika Jana balawegaya· Kalutara· 6 December 2024 ·Procedural: Vote on Account Debate (Introduction and Motion)

HealthcareCorruption & Governance Reform
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Only NMRA-registered medicines are supplied to government hospitals, though delays, inefficiency, and past irregularities within the NMRA are being addressed, including by expediting registrations. A report has been requested on the referenced news item and will be presented to Parliament. He rejected claims that large quantities of unregistered or substandard medicines had entered the state hospital system bypassing the NMRA, stating that medicines with quality issues are suspended.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Mr. Speaker, only NMRA-registered medicines are distributed to government hospitals and institutions. There are delays at the NMRA — we all must accept that — and there have been irregularities, fraud, corruption, and inefficiency within it. We are rectifying these. We are expediting both temporary and permanent registrations in significant numbers.

¶ 02 A report on this news item has been called for, Hon. Member, and I will present a detailed report to Parliament. However, I must state that a large quantity of “bad medicines” has not entered the state hospital system bypassing the NMRA. There is no such mechanism. Where there are quality issues with certain medicines, we suspend them. The NMRA does not ignore standards in government distribution. I will brief you fully.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Friday, 6 December 2024 ·No. 1734424725051921 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
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Permalink
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Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayathissa. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 6 December 2024. No. 1734424725051921. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/19546