HNB Assurance (HNBA) sponsored the Western Provincial Symposium on ‘Awareness for Key Stakeholders: Community Based Strategies for a Quality Childhood’, which was held recently by the College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka (CCPSL). 

This initiative focuses in promoting the concept of healthy living among the general public. This step was taken as part of the college theme for this year ‘Beyond Survival, Investing for Quality Childhood’. The symposium mainly focused on creating awareness among key stakeholders to uplift the livelihoods of children facing various societal and communal issues.

HNBA strongly believes in nurturing and uplifting the lives of children as today’s child is tomorrow’s future. HNBA has proudly unveiled insurance plans such as My Child and Scholar with the vision of shaping up lives of children by ensuring a secure future. 

This initiative will pay greater attention on stern communal issues such as child abuse, child preventable accidents, quality survival of preterm children, prevention of non-communicable diseases, quality life and the survival of differently abled children. Addressing the gathering, Dinesh Yogaratnam, Head of Marketing, HNBA said, “It is believed that propagating the concept of healthy living could help in enriching the lives of the general public as well as in taking relevant measures to build various strategies to protect children and to promote a healthy lifestyle from birth 
to retirement”.

The College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka is one of the oldest leading professional bodies of public health Specialists in Sri Lanka with expertise in maternal health, child care, control of communicable and non-communicable diseases, public health management, planning and monitoring, environmental and occupational health and many more services related to public health. The President of CCPSL Dr.DeepikaAttygalle reviewed some important health statistics and the positive impact such public awareness programs have created among the general public over the past years. Accordingly, the infant mortality rate has improved from 160 per 1,000 live births in 1992 to 8.8 per 1,000 live births in 2013. In the 1950s, the maternal mortality ratio in Sri Lanka was estimated at between 500 and 600 per 100,000 live births, and  in 2013 national statistics shows its improvement as 32 per 100 000 live . The life expectancy at birth for a male and female during the time span of 1920-1922 was 32.7 years 30.7 years respectively. It is believed that these achievements were mainly due to constant improvements of public health services and the active role in creating public health awareness.