Since Sri Lanka's independence in 1948, the government has been committed to providing a healthcare system that reaches all classes, genders and ethnicities. In 1949, health was declared a fundamental right of citizenship by Sri Lanka’s first Minister of Health, S. W. D. Bandaranaike. Since then, Sri Lanka has been consistently held as a model of good health at low cost.

Striving for Equity: Healthcare in Sri Lanka from Independence to the Millennium, 1948–2000 explores the implementation of primary healthcare in Sri Lanka against the background of a 30-year internal conflict. It includes an analysis of how international health organisations like the WHO imposed a global health agenda on the developing world through a study of a joint WHO–Sri Lanka project on tuberculosis control.

The author studies selected health policy developments and programmes in Sri Lanka from 1948–2000 with a special focus on children's health, especially the problem of malnutrition, and the implementation of the childhood immunisation programme.

Along with the continuing incidence of communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases present a growing obstacle to the achievement of equity in the twenty-first century. How the country has responded to this double disease burden problem provides the focus of the final chapter.