Speech by Ambassador K Kesavapany, SIF Governor, at the Launch Ceremony for ‘Enhancing Healthcare Education in Sri Lanka’

Honourable Minister Mr Maithripala Sirisena Minister of Health,
Honourable Minister Mr S.B. Dissanayake Minister of Higher Education,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning. It’s wonderful to be here today, surrounded by friends from Singapore and Sri Lanka.

Today, we gather to celebrate the start of many new friendships between Singapore and Sri Lanka, through the SIF as well as the Ministry of Health, the University of Colombo, Temasek Foundation and the medical communities of Singapore and Sri Lanka. At SIF, we firmly believe in harnessing the power of friendships to create positive change.

The importance we place on friendship is precisely what led SIF to embark on this collaboration. We are delighted that conditions are propitious for post-conflict development and we celebrate your efforts in it. As your neighbour and friend, we want to support you in your reconstruction efforts. In fact, SIF has been working on capacity-building projects in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and India since 1991. And in 2011, when the University of Colombo requested for Singapore’s assistance to enhance its healthcare education, we readily said yes.

On a personal note, may I say that this occasion provides an opportunity to give back. My generation of Singaporeans were largely schooled in the English language, literature, Mathemetics and the sciences by un-forgettable teachers of Sri Lankan origin.It was one such Singaporean wordsmith, Mr S. Rajaratnam, who was destined to craft the National Pledge upon our achievement of independence in 1965. So, when SIF invited me to be part of this event to launch this human capital development project, I jumped at the chance to express a long-held wish.

Healthcare is one of the SIF’s core focus areas in which we feel Singaporeans can add value. The project -- Enhancing Healthcare Education in Sri Lanka – will be a three year multi-disciplinary and holistic healthcare programme. It seeks to enhance the quality of healthcare education at a national level through the training of local healthcare professionals.

Our model, anchored in building capacity and sustainability, is very simple. We start with a pool of 210 individuals who will undergo direct training. They will go on to train others, effecting exponential, long-term changes in the country’s healthcare service delivery system. This will in turn positively impact on the lives of thousands of members of the Sri Lankan public annually.

To enable this outcome, we have gathered together some of our best resources. Temasek Foundation is one of Singapore’s biggest supporters of international development and they have provided significant funding to make a project of this scale possible. The Singapore International Volunteers, are specialist volunteers who represent some of the top medical talent in Singapore, and they have stepped forward to generously share their expertise and drive the training programme. In the same vein, we are working in partnership with the most important healthcare service and education providers in Sri Lanka - the Ministry of Health and the University of Colombo. All these players, gathered here, share one common goal: they are committed to making a positive and sustainable difference to Sri Lanka’s healthcare system.

And this very effort - bringing together institutions and people with the best skills and resources in Sri Lanka and Singapore - is what we at SIF do best. We bring world communities together to do good. We enable them to share ideas, skills and resources to effect real change in areas such as healthcare, education, the environment, arts and culture, as well as livelihood and business. Over the last 22 years, our programmes have impacted hundreds of thousands of lives around Asia in a variety of ways.

We do this because we believe we all can, and should do our part to build a better world, one we envision as peaceful, inclusive and offering opportunities for all. We are grateful that you let us work with you to realise this shared vision of a better world. On this note, I wish you all a wonderful day ahead.