Current Health Expenditure (CHE) in Sri Lanka in 2018 was Rs. 423 billion, equivalent to 2.9% of GDP, and Rs. 19,772 per capita with provisional estimates in 2019 of Rs 489 billion or 3.3% of GDP and Rs 22,657 per capita. The government financed 48% while the private sector accounted for 52% of the healthcare costs in 2018. Share of inpatient care spending was 41% while share of outpatient care was 19%. Pharmacy sales of medicines were responsible for 19% of health spending. Expenditure on public health programmes was 5%. According to the type of institution, 53% of the spending was incurred in hospitals while 41% was in non-hospital facilities.

The improvements in the present publication include several changes in the underlying data sources and revisions to estimation methods in compliance with international standards. This publication provides updated estimates for all years since 1990 to ensure full comparability of the SLHA estimates across different years. These estimates are compatible with SHA 2011, SHA 1.0 and SLNHA frameworks. Further this reports estimates of primary care spending according to four different international definitions for the firs time.