Price of heart stents to be reduced: Minister

The price of heart stents will be reduced from next week, Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne said. “The current price of a stent is around Rs. 300,000 and after the price reduction, it will be available to the public at Rs.105,000, Minister Senaratne said. Minister Senaratne had stated that accordingly the price of stents will go down by Rs.195,000 which is a huge amount.

“The National Medicine Regulatory Authority (NMRA) has already taken steps to formulate the price reduction. The main intention of all these price reductions is creating a healthy society that promotes the development of the country,”the Minister said. Minister Senaratne was speaking during the ‘Let us be healthy’ (Api Nirogi Wemu) programme at Beruwala recently.

Minister Senaratne had pointed out that 71 percent of deaths occur in Sri Lanka due to non communicable Diseases (NCDs) and it is found that smoking had gone down by 46 percent after the strict rules and regulations introduced such as increasing the price of cigarettes etc. The gazette notification on banning the sale of cigarettes around a radius of 500 metres from a school will be introduced soon.

“The prices of eye lenses have seen a drastic reduction and patients who undergo cataract surgeries can get lenses free of charge,” the Minister said.

“A signal light system has been introduced for soft drinks to control the sugar content in them to control diabetes. People can now check how much sugar soft drinks contain and control their sugar intake,” the Minister added. 

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