Undergraduate Community Medicine teaching in Sri Lanka: past, present and the future

Sri Lanka has achieved health indicators comparable to those of developed countries despite limited resources. A major contributory factor towards achieving this goal has been the development of human resources in public health. Public health professionals in Sri Lanka comprise a diverse range of categories including doctors, nurses, midwives and other allied health workers. They receive their education in a wide range of disciplines and diverse academic settings. In most of these institutions, public health or community medicine is taught as a discipline. Training future doctors in community medicine is an important component in this context.